The production of hydrogen and oxygen from water used to be a very simple experiment that we performed at school. Just like Faraday, we drew an electric current through water via two relatively inert electrodes submerged within the water and we get hydrogen evolving at the cathode and oxygen at the anode. The collected hydrogen gas was always twice the volume of the collected oxygen gas, (because of course each water molecule consisted of two hydrogen atoms and only one oxygen atom) and the total amount of gases evolving were directly proportional to the electric current drawn through the water. It all seemed straightforward enough and indeed that was all we needed to know to get us through our exams.
At the time not many of us questioned what we were being taught, after all, we were being taught by qualified teachers - adults… we had no reason to question them. They must obviously know what they are talking about (I now know this to be a common misconception).
It was about this time that I realised, that just like us pupils, teachers themselves had simply been taught what they were teaching us, and unless they themselves had asked more in-depth questions, then they really knew no more than we now did.
Even at 13, I had - and always have had - a very keen interest in science, so I was a little more knowledgeable on the subject than my fellow pupils were. And while everybody else accepted the above electrolysis experiment without question… I was somewhat confused.
I knew that hydrogen was the smallest element, having just a proton and an electron, and that oxygen was much larger with its eight protons, eight neutrons and eight electrons, so the resulting gas volumes baffled me. Way back then I would have expected the oxygen gas to take up more space than the hydrogen gas, believing that it would require 16 tiny hydrogen atoms to take up the same volume as one oxygen atom. Clearly this was not the case… why?
I asked my teacher at the time, why this was so. But it was obvious that he had never been faced with this question before, and as such had never given this any thought. Needless to say he did not know the answer. I became renowned for asking questions that my teachers could not answer, and I’m sure some of them dreaded my appearance in their classes. My observations and questioning nature did however make someone take note and I was to receive the FK science award on the last day of secondary school.
Now all these years later, I’m still questioning. In fact I live by the motto:
Question everything. Sort the facts from the fiction. Verify the facts. Proceed with caution!Nowhere does this logic have more merit than on these open source forums.
Science can be quite difficult to understand, indeed it can be quite complicated when the surface is scratched, and as such, many people with no relevant education find it a lot easier simply to dismiss the science and accept quackery. I see this all the time – it is clearly evident all the time. Quackery is often uncomplicated so immediately appeals to the ignorant - many of whom it would seem are also completely void of any common sense and quite happy to live out their lives in fantasy worlds.
The problem for me is that continually questioning things - particularly people and their claims - often does not go down overly well. I’m seen as disruptive and a trouble-maker simply for not accepting someone’s word for something, and ultimately I’m banned from forums. My questioning and common sense approach to things often alienates me from other forum members, many of whom are unbelievably gullible, while being ignorant enough to happily jump on a bandwagon and blindly defend pseudoscience and gibberish.
However, this is not a popularity contest and irrelevant of how unpopular it may make you, it really is in everyone’s best interest to:
Question everything. Sort the facts from the fiction. Verify the facts. Proceed with caution!The answer to the gas volumes created by electrolysis can be put down to Avogadro’s hypothesis, which states:
Equal volumes of different gases, at the same temperature and pressure, contain the same number of molecules.
This implies then that even though the hydrogen molecule has 1/16th the mass of an oxygen molecule, it takes up the same volume in space.
Which begs another question: If the hydrogen molecule is the same size in volume as the oxygen molecule - or any other gas molecule - how and why can it diffuse through a fabric that oxygen and other gases can not? Or does it?
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Topic: Question everything! (Read 4933 times)
