this bit) and cut the metal casing of the battery.

The carbon rod is in the middle of the battery

surrounded by electrolyte goo. You need to clean
the rod, disposing of the spent battery casing, and
the goo, sensibly.
Once you have two clean rods, connect them to
either terminal of a 9 V battery using short lengths
of wire. Now immerse them in a solution of water
in a small tub.
What happens? . . . Very little! The reason is
that ordinary water is a pretty poor conductor of
electricity. We need to add some free ions to the
solution.
This comes in the form of common baking soda.
Add a sprinkle to the solution, and see the bubbles
form!
You can capture these bubbles with a test tube,
and test the respective anode and cathode to see if
the bubbles are hydrogen or oxygen.
Conclusion
Free ions are necessary in a solution, for electrolysis
to take place. In large electrolyzers, we might use a
strong alkali-like potassium hydroxide, which is
highly caustic.
So what’s happening here?
Figure 3-8 gives us a guide as to the chemical
reactions that are taking place at the anode and the
cathode. We can see that the positively charged ions,
the cations, move toward the cathode, while the
negatively charged ions, the anions, move toward the
anode. It is the power supply to the electrolyzer that
provides the energy for this movement to take place.
We can prove that the hydrogen and oxygen are
coming from water by summing the chemical
reactions that are taking place at the anode and the
cathode. This is shown in Figure 3-9.
32
Project 5: Investigating Water El