Q&A for How to Make Oxygen and Hydrogen from Water Using Electrolysis

It all depends on the safety precautions taken during the experiment. Hydrogen is easily flammable and requires oxygen to burn. Before presenting the experiment in front of the class, make sure you understand the process. Safety equipment like as goggles and gloves are recommended.

No. Chloride is an extremely dangerous gas, and should not be inhaled under any circumstances. Fortunately, there will only be a tiny bit of chloride present in this experiment and should not cause you much harm--unless you use a very high voltage battery. Nonetheless, it would be a good idea to avoid inhaling any chloride gases, regardless of the amount.

Hydrogen is less dense than oxygen so it should rise to the top of the container, though you would not be able to see it. With this in mind, theoretically if you used a bottle rather than a cup and had a small tube to run the hydrogen off with you could potentially store the hydrogen separately. Though hydrogen is highly flammable/can be explosive, so it's not recommended to store in large quantities. If you want to start getting technical, there are also sensors you can buy that recognize the presence of O2 and H2, which you could use in addition to small pumps so you could separate the hydrogen made and use it as a fuel source.

Hydrogen gas is extremely flammable and will burn whenever oxygen is introduced so if you do this, make sure an competent adult who understands the process is included.

You could try moving the electrodes closer together. If they are far away then electricity won't conduct. Also, you can try using baking soda instead of salt.

4e- is the transfer of electrons and the 4H+ shows that the hydrogen has an overall positive charge from losing its electrons. The process can be predicted from the periodic table. Hydrogen has a lower electron affinity, so it will lose its electrons before oxygen. Affinity moves from left to right and bottom to top. Flourine has the highest affinity. The electric current is the energy that frees the electrons, breaking the bond between Hydrogen and the Oxygen.

Hydrogen will not ignite when it's combined with oxygen. However, oxygen will feed the flame.

Yes! It is dangerous because hydrogen is highly flammable and O2 will only feed the flame.

You can't.

Yes, it will make the wire look rusted.

You will need to put the gas in a place with a very, very cold temperature because gas's boiling points are very low. Once you lower it under the boiling point, you have liquid oxygen or hydrogen.

Simply put the funnel and glass above. Imagine that hydrogen is water, but it flows up instead of down. Hydrogen will settle in the glass.

No. You would end up with CO2. Most processes that split H2O to breathable O2 use high pressure steam through an electrolysis process, no electrolyte involved.

Rate of electrolysis directly depends on the conductivity, the voltage, and the surface area of electrodes. Considering you do something similar to this article, it will take a very, very long time for all water in the container to get consumed.

Bubbles are less dense than water. So they float up. You just need to figure out a way so that the bubbles go and get collected in a container without escaping into the atmosphere. Simply invert a test tube and submerge it over the electrode.

Yes, if you use table salt. Consider using baking soda to produce oxygen instead of chlorine at the anode.

The one connected to the positive terminal of the battery is the anode. If you observe carefully, the pole which produces more gas/bubbles is the cathode.

You can with a different setup. Use a paper cup, stick the pencils through the bottom of the cup, until half way, fill the cup with the salt water and put 2 water filled test tubes and put one mouth facing down on one of the pencils, and do that again with the other, the pencil that you connected to (-) will be hydrogen, and (+) will be oxygen.

Some, but not very much, would be left. It might be irritating though. The reason is that (-) is generating some NaOH while (+) is generating less HCl, so it neutralizes.

Use a test tube over the pencils. Then pouch a hole in the bottom and lend it to a bottle for storage.

Hydrogen and oxygen are diatomic, so they will naturally pair up in groups of two.

Human beings inhale oxygen all day long, the air around you has a twenty percent oxygen ratio, so it is safe to inhale. However, you should be careful because it can ignite and cause severe damage very easily.

There is no difference, both are water (H2O). The difference is that seawater is saltier than freshwater.

No, there is a fixed amount of hydrogen and oxygen, which you can obtain from the water. However, adding salt would increase the conductivity and make it easier for electrons to flow, so would definitely speed up the process and increase the amount being produced at any one time.

When hydrogen burns, it combines with oxygen in the atmosphere and produces water. The heat may also cause the nitrogen in the air around the flame to combine with oxygen in the air to produce small amounts of oxides of nitrogen.