I'm taking a first year university chemistry course, and I am reading a lot of contradicting things. Some people say that ionic compounds that are soluble in water are always electrically conductive, others say that it maybe conductive. Which one is it?
I have this problem to think about:
Suppose that an unknown chemical compound exhibits the following properties:
- it is crystalline but shows no electric conductivity in the solid state
- it melts at $\mathrm{300^\circ C}$ and decomposes at $\mathrm{400^\circ C}$
- the compound is soluble in water, the solution shows no electrical conductivity.
What kind of chemical bond would you expect in the given compound? Try to describe this type of bond in detail.
Everything screams "ionic" (high melting point, solid at room temperature, crystalline structure, non-conducting in solid form) besides the fact that it doesn't conduct in water.