Electrolysis in a glass. Fun chemistry experience at home

ENTERTAINING EXPERIENCES AT HOME
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Electrolysis in a glass. Chemical experiments

Entertaining experiments in chemistry

Entertaining experiences at home / Chemistry experiments for children

In fact, experiments in electrochemistry are often tried at home, but they do not always come out: some little thing - and nothing happens. If you follow all our instructions, you can be sure that the experience will succeed.

Let's start with a very simple yet instructive experience. For him, you need one single reagent: ink of any color. True, you have to work a little on the device.

Take two metal strips 8-10 cm long and 1-2 cm wide. They can be made of iron, copper, aluminum - it doesn't matter, as long as they freely pass into a transparent vessel - a tall beaker or a large test tube. Before experiment, drill holes in the plates on one side for attaching conductors. Prepare two identical, literally a few millimeters thick, plastic or wooden spacers and glue them with metal strips so that they, arranged in parallel, do not touch each other. Almost any glue is suitable - BF, Moment, etc.

Pour water into a beaker or test tube and drop enough ink into it so that the solution is not very saturated in color (however, it should not be transparent either). Lower the construction of two strips into it, connect them with wires to two batteries connected in series, "plus" to "minus". A few minutes later, the ink solution between the plates will begin to lighten, and dark particles will collect at the bottom and top.

The composition of the ink consists of very small colored particles suspended in water. Under the action of current, they stick together and can no longer swim in the water, but sink to the bottom under the action of gravity. It is clear that the solution thus becomes more and more pale.

But how did the particles get to the top? When a current is applied to solutions, gases are often formed. In our case, gas bubbles pick up solid particles and carry them up.

Electrolysis in a glass

In the next experiment, a thick-walled tea glass, expanding upwards, will serve as an electrolytic bath. Prepare a plywood circle of such a diameter that it is pressed against the wall of the glass three to four centimeters above the bottom. Drill two holes in advance in the circle (or cut a slot in it in diameter), pierce two holes nearby with an awl: the wires will pass through them. Insert two 5-6 cm long pencils, sharpened at one end, into large holes or into a slot. Pencils, more precisely, their leads, will serve as electrodes. On the unfinished ends of the pencils, make notches so that the leads are exposed, and attach the bare ends of the wires to them. Twist the wires and carefully wrap them with insulating tape, and in order for the insulation to be completely reliable, it is best to hide the wires in rubber tubes. All parts of the device are ready, it remains only to assemble it, that is, insert a circle with electrodes inside the glass.

Put the glass on a plate and fill it to the brim with a solution of washing soda ash Na₂CO₃ at the rate of 2-3 teaspoons per glass of water. Fill two test tubes with the same solution. Close one of them with your thumb, turn it upside down and immerse it in a glass so that not a single air bubble gets into it. Under water, put the test tube on the pencil electrode. Do the same with the second tube.

Batteries - at least three in number - must be connected in series, "plus" one to the "minus" of the other, and connect wires from pencils to the extreme batteries. The electrolysis of the solution will start immediately. Positively charged hydrogen ions H⁺ will go to the negatively charged electrode - the cathode, attach an electron there and turn into hydrogen gas. When a full tube of hydrogen is collected at the pencil connected to the "minus", it can be removed and, without turning over, set fire to the gas. It will light up with a characteristic sound. At the other electrode, positive (anode), oxygen is released. Close the test tube filled with it with your finger under water, remove it from the glass, turn it over and bring in a smoldering splinter - it will light up.

So out of the water₂O turned out and hydrogen H₂, and oxygen O₂; what is the soda for? To speed up the experience. Pure water conducts electricity very poorly, the electrochemical reaction in it is too slow.

With the same device, one more experiment can be made - the electrolysis of a saturated sodium chloride solution NaCl. In this case, one tube will be filled with colorless hydrogen, and the other with yellow-green gas. This is chlorine, which is formed from table salt. Chlorine easily gives up its charge and is the first to be released at the anode.

Close the test tube with chlorine, which also contains a little salt solution, with your finger under water, turn over and shake without removing your finger. In a test tube, a solution of chlorine is formed - chlorine water. It has strong bleaching properties. For example, if you add chlorine water to a pale blue ink solution, it will discolor.

During the electrolysis of table salt, another substance is formed - caustic soda. This alkali remains in solution, which can be verified by dropping a little phenolphthalein solution or a homemade indicator into a glass near the negative electrode.

So, in the experiment we got three valuable substances at once - hydrogen, chlorine and caustic soda. That is why salt electrolysis is so widely used in industry.

With the help of current and a saturated solution of sodium chloride, another interesting experiment can be done. Let's now deal with the fact that we will drill metal with an ordinary pencil.

Prepare a saturated salt solution in a tea saucer. Wire a safety razor blade to the positive pole of a flashlight battery (the blade will be the anode). At the sharpened end of the pencil, break off the lead and pick it out about half a millimeter with a needle. 2-3 cm higher, make a notch with a knife to the stylus and wind the end of the bare wire around it; wrap this place with insulating tape, and attach the other end of the wire to the negative pole of the battery (the pencil will be the cathode).

Place the blade in a saucer of solution and touch the cathode pencil to the blade. Immediately, hydrogen bubbles will begin to bubble up around the pencil. And the anode blade will dissolve: the iron atoms will acquire a charge, turn into ions and go into solution. So in ten to fifteen minutes a through hole will turn out in the blade. It forms especially quickly if the battery is new and the blade is thin (0,08 mm). In aluminum foil, a hole is drilled in just seconds.

If you want to drill a hole with a pencil in a certain place on a thin metal plate, then it is better to varnish the workpiece in advance, and remove the varnish where you will drill.

The recess in the stylus was necessary so that the stylus did not touch the metal. Otherwise, the circuit will immediately close, the current will not go through the solution and there will be no electrolysis.

You can drill with a pencil without an electrolytic bath (in our case, without a tea saucer). Put the anode plate on a board or on a plate, drip water, dip the pencil attached to the battery in salt and immerse its sharpened end in a drop. From time to time, remove the electrolysis products with a cloth and apply a new drop. By repeating this operation, you can, without making any effort, drill through metal foil or tin from a tin can. Also, by the way, you can make a hole in a broken steel knife to attach a new handle to it.

Of course, for drilling metal with a thickness of more than a millimeter, one battery is not enough - you need to connect several batteries in parallel or use a step-down transformer with a rectifier - for example, from a children's railway or from a wood burning device. And regardless of the current source and method of electrolysis, you will have to change the electrolyte solution several times and clean the hole well with a nail or awl.

Author: Olgin O.M.

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