Teaching Little Miss how to make Hydrogen

Gooooood evening homeedders hope we're all having a wonderful time and I'm loving some of the new innovative ways to teach kids new things. It's been quite enjoyable to watch. Tonight we once again delve into the world of STEM focusing hydrogen which has been quite the discussion point of late as a replacement for renewable energy.

Now it's important to note that technology isn't particularly there yet as a friend pointed out he has a hydrogen generator that turns distilled water into hydrogen. His set up cost $15,000 and makes about 600ml of pure nitrogen which isn't much.

In comparison the amount of energy it takes to create that small amount of hydrogen is using solar would power the person's T.V, Fridge and alot of other things. That 600ml also provides less power than what it used to create. So we're still along way from having it as a usable source but still a fun experiment to do with the kids.

What you need

It's a pretty simple experiment and you can use what's laying around. We used a 6v battery, electrical tape, boiled water from the kettle, an old cord which we chopped up as we needed the wires and a glass.

So first of all cut the ends off the wire and strip away the outside layer which will expose a positive, negative and a ground wire.

Strip away the ends with one wide a little longer as this will need to be wrapped around the battery points and the other end a little less as these will be the ends that go into the water.

Then attach the wires to the battery securing them with electrical tape making sure they are not loose as you will need to ensure you maintain the electrical current.

Now that they're all connected place both wires into the glass filled with boiled kettle water. It is important to use boiled water as it boils all the impurities out of the water. If you can get distilled water even better!

OH O!

Hmmm, it appears that our experiment hasn't lived upto expectations and hasn't provided the results we had hoped for. Never to worry dads got an idea!

It's time to rip out the big guns and jack up the power! I'm also going to use the smaller 6v battery and create a circuit to add both batteries to the same outlet.

So our hydrogen experiment also just turned into one about electrical circuits.

This part gets a little tricky and it's why we use colour coded cables do we don't cross lines. We need to hook up positive to positive and negative to negative always starting with the negative wires first. A bit more electrical tape and more wires and now we have a really good back yard job lol. So much easier if I had a circuit board but I don't and this will do.

It's Time!

Now that we have all our wires set up and batteries connected to each other it's time to place them back into the water. You'll notice we also switched to a smaller glass as I thought possibly having less space and water may yield better results.

Yeahhhh! Now we're cooking! As you can see those bubbles forming around the negative cord is pure hydrogen and as the bubbles rise it is releasing hydrogen into the atmosphere. Don't be too alarmed these are minute amounts so probably won't cause any harm but do keep your distance.

What's occuring is the electrical current is causing the H2O molecules to separate and producing nitrogen.

And there you have it home edders, a wonderful science experiment to help kids get underway with learning about water, oxygen and a future energy source, Hydrogen.