Oh God, What Is He Doing Now: Making Hydrogen ITT
Entry posted by Kzoppistan
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So I decided to perform a classic experiment of using electricity to cleave apart the very atoms of existence.
The electrolysis of H2O.
What you need:
- Glass cup
- Water
- Power source
- Wires
- NaCl (table salt)
It also helps to have carbon rods to attach the wires to. I didn't, but I did solder much larger gauge copper wires to the ones coming from the cigarette lighter plug in. This is to increase the surface area of the anode and cathode.
For the power source I took an unusual route. I know that anything with a inverter/converter power box made for most small electronics makes the electricity pretty safe. Turns it into DC and greatly reduces the voltage. I probably could have tested it. Nevertheless, I am leery of sticking wires coming from a wall socket into water. I'm a little crazy, not stupid. I'm not nearly careful enough nor sufficiently skilled in the electrical arts to not screw something up and end my career as a mad scientist in a closed casket.
So I used my car jump starter instead. It has a handy cigarette lighter
adapter slot and I scavenged one such adapter for this purpose. The charger boasts of 12 volts but I was a little disappointed to find that my adapter has a resister in it that cuts it down to about 5.43 volts as confirmed by the multimeter. Makes sense, I suppose, seeing as it was designed for a phone or something. Before I clipped off the connector, of course.
Also, I rolled up some cardboard from a soda can box and duct taped it to snugly fit about 6 AA batteries if I wish to throw that in the mix. I also have a 9 volt. Really, combined with the adapter, just enough to shock the piss out of you. But for now I stuck with the 5 volts from the adapter.
The salt greatly assists the process, as pure water is not very conductive at all. The addition of sodium chloride (a side note, actually a metal) turns normal water into an electrolyte, which sort of throws a whole bunch of negative and positive ions into the juice- greatly speeding up the process of oxidization/reduction reaction by increasing the ease at which elections travel through the water and pair with their charged opposite ions. I like to think of it as Chaos Fluid. 3 tablespoons or so for a cup of water, gets it close to saturation.
Now for the magic. Inserting the large gauge copper wires into the solution caused an immediate eruption of hydrogen bubbles from the cathode. Out of the anode comes chlorine gas. I didn't detect much of that, just a few bubbles, nor did I smell anything, but I've read that if you leave it going long enough your apartment/shack/cell will begin to smell like a pool. The brine slowly turns into sodium hydroxide (ha ha, no more collecting ashes for me, I'm industrializing!). A match placed close to the surface creates little sizzling, popping, sounds as the tiny hydrogen bubbles exit the surface of the water.
Neat.
If one were so inclined, the hydrogen and chlorine gasses can be contained and kept for other experiments or just to scare the !@#$ out of your neighbors.
Over all, this was a very fun use of an hour. I'm now working on rigging an apparatus to collect the gasses for long term use. My next step will be to get ahold of some platinum and try to squeeze voltage out of recombining hydrogen and oxygen.
A small note of caution for those that want to reproduce this experiment: a small amount of hydrogen (say, a test tube) is relatively safe. If you light it you'll get a small poof. A lot of hydrogen is... less safe. And, not only that, if you do collect it, make sure it is not mixed with any oxygen whatsoever, as a combination of the two is highly reactive to fire, you would then posses one of the most explosive things the average person could get their hands on. Very volatile. And you may think that missing a few digits is cool now, but let me tell ya- it doesn't score any points with the ladies.
Also, chlorine will kill you.
So watch out for that.
That's all, have fun kids.
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