Salt condenses water?

[Satori]

I thought this was wierd. This is a cup I keep in my salt bucket. I took it out last night and left it on this cardboard box, coated in TM Pro. Today, I notice it's condensed with water, running on the box. Normal?

http://mike.magnuson.com/saltcondense.jpg

[Pyrrhus]

Probably why you need to keep salt tightly sealed to prevent clumping.

[widefx]

So do you think the salt absorbed the water from the air conditioning

[Satori]

I use a swamp cooler, but yeah, it absorbed the moisture out of the air. You can see two little wet salt clumps too.
I used to leave my IO bags open. It got a little clumpy, but never wet.

[sir_dudeguy]

well i dont use a swamp cooler, but my room is around 80% humidity and i left a bag of IO salt open one night, and in the morning the salt was completely solid lol. so i would say that salt definately absorbs moisture from the air.

[Che]

My guess is osmosis. I think that the salt covering the cup had absorbed moisture from the air or wherever. When you placed it on the dry cardboard box the moisture was wicked or moved from the salt to the cardboard box. The box had a lower concentration of water and thus the moisture moved toward the box to equalize the concentration of water across the gradient.

[Che]

oh, by the way, I could be completely wrong with my previous guess. hehe.

[joeyf]

I've noticed that happen, but in a glass measuring cup. I would use it to measure salt out, then forget to rinse the cup and within I'd say 6 hrs there'd be water droplets where the salt crystals were.