Who Likes Making Electrolysis Machines?!

[Telefragged]

Well, my friend and I were bored the other night, so we decided to make an electrolysis machine to split water into hydrogen and oxygen for fun, to burn off in the morning.
It's kind of pathetic that we stayed up all night creating a useless piece of trash that I ended up getting rid of today anyway (it wasn't working properly). The Pretzel Keg from my kitchen served as our water tank, where our electrodes were also located. This monstrosity was all powered by an underpowered (well, for the job) NAPA battery charger. It started to produce hydrogen almost immidiately as there 2x the amount of hydrogen in water as there is oxygen.

Being late and all, we failed to remember that moisture (water from the tank) salt (from the pretzels) oxygen (from the electrodes), and electricity (from our charger) corrodes copper very quickly in an isolated environment. We made out electrodes outa copper becasue it conducts easily, but, it also corroded in our water tank and turned the water a turquiose color after a couple of hours.

After my rambling, I think I'll try to show you this thing if the Forum will let me. Don't say I didn't warn you however, this thing is Ugly!

[Cliffio]

i dont get it

i mean i get it, but when i think about the reasons, well, i dont get it

[Telefragged]

Boredom can have adverse effect on how you spend your evening, especially when your an electronic freak like me :D

[Jonno06]

lol,thats awesome....

/me wants to make one now

[magman007]

DUDE!!! you shoulda kept it and used the materials to make your own home annodizing station! it woulda worked!

[Telefragged]

Meh... a better version is on the way, Zinc is gonna be used for wiring it, so no corrosion. BTW, I have nothing to Annodize, so what would I do with it... I'm working on a newer and better project now...

[Aranarth]

Ach. Now you made me think about work. Bad you! So you didn't do anything to collect the separate gasses, just wanted to split some molecules?
-AranarthX

[Vegeta]

I have made these- ton of fun if doen correctly...

you haev two problesms I can see in taht pic-

1) from what I can see there is no separator in between the air in between the cathode and annode. This is where your oxy/hyd goes and if not separated by somethign they will mix.

2) you have two tubes connected to two bottles on the outside. Your problem is that the tubes go down to the bottles. Hydrogen and Oxygen in gas states are lighter than air. They would not jsut 'float' down into those bottles.

Here is a diagram of a better machien to do the job:

[subbeh]

If my mom found that in my room I'd be in trouble. It looks a lot like a "device used for smoking marijuana", as it was so eloquently put in "Meet the Parents"

Hehehe... great movie!

[Vegeta]

As you can see, I have experience. :)

I had one setup in my room for a long time. My mom asked waht It was.. I told her.. and she was like ok... I guesss she was just glad I was 'learning' (like I always am) instead of smoking it....

Of course I didn't tell her what I was goign to do with the hydrogen/oxygen....

[zbody]

Made one of those in high school. Use thick graphite rods from pencils instead of the copper. We also plugged ours dirrectly into the wall so be careful you don't electrocute yourselves.

[Miscue]

Nerds... :) I like it!

[TransMan]

LOL yeh boredom makes you do wierd stuff I like to figure out dif ways of blowing up stuf or destroying it. :D

[Telefragged]

Yea, I was bored... It was fun... And its interesting to Solder with a blowtorch in your kitchen sink @ 2:30 in the morning. And Vegeta, we realized we screwed up after we built it, as we didn't really pay attention to what we were doing. I'm building a better, smaller, backpack-mounted one in a few days after I get some parts in from All Electronics. I have no use for the hydrogen or oxygen, as I have no way to compress or properly bottle it. Its just fun to burn off. The same friend I built this one with went ahead and made a working one off of 3 large garbage cans, some 2" PVC piping, several car batteries, and lots of water. We left it on all night and threw a match in it in the morning... burn O2 burn!!!

[Mango]

That is neat! :) Try to get a picture of the flames in action! :)

[Vegeta]

ya i really wish you could compress it somehow... but the stuff is so easy to lose if not transfered from one container to another carefully and all. I iwsh i could compress it enough and get it into a liquid state... both O2 and H...

it would be great to be able to compress it and put it in sealed trasportable container.

[Telefragged]

Meh, we kinda built it off of our lmited knowledge gained in the science lab when the teacher put one out for us to observe... Its fun to burn off the O2 and H but the flames don't last very long, more like a quick burst...

BTW, Methinks Vegeta is wierd... :p

[TRIAD]

We did that in science, got to light the hydrogen, but then some group filled a 1 liter test tube with hydrogen, and the teacher found out. We also had fun burning stuff like methyl alcohol, etc. But then I went on the Chemistry, and got to burn even cooler stuff that can blind you. And now this year I'm taking AP Chem, so hopefully (every other class got to) we can make contact explosives, where you just tap them with something and they blow up, but they have to be small or thy won't work.

[Telefragged]

I hope I get to take AP chemistry... I've got the knowledge and the interest... now lets just see if laziness sets in before then... eek...