Electro-plating is cool, but don't play with chemicals.
Unless you know what your doing.
So… yesterday, I was struck with a sudden urge to experiment. I stumbled upon a YouTube video about a man who made a rocket fueled solely by water and electricity! This process, known as hydrolysis, involves splitting water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen using electricity. Fun fact: when you split water this way, you end up with the perfect ratio of hydrogen and oxygen for a combustion reaction. That was a good video.
This amazingly simple process for making an explosive mixture of hydrogen and oxygen led me to explore other similar processes that could produce cool stuff. One such process is electroplating. By running a current through an acidic solution (like vinegar) with some salt (NaCl) added to increase conductivity, and passing the current from a piece of copper, through the solution, to another piece of copper, copper ions dissolve into the solution. This leaves you with a beautiful copper electrolyte, perfect for all your electroplating needs.
There’s only one problem… adding salt increases the solution’s conductivity, but it also causes a fun chemical reaction. Basically, sodium chloride (salt) reacts with water to form sodium hydroxide (NaOH), hydrogen gas (H2), and chlorine gas (Cl2).
This last one is not ideal. If you happen to add a lot more salt than you should, you kind of end up producing more chlorine gas. So… yeah, not ideal. I would never do that, but I’m just educating you so you don’t do that either, because I didn’t do that.
With this story for context and my bedroom air quality temporarily compromised, let’s take a moment to study the chemistry that high school failed to teach us
Chemistry Explained simply so you can avoid making deadly chlorine gas.
Remember this? Well, it turns out that this is a very useful map when it comes to understanding chemistry.
Element. An element is a unique type of atom defined by the number of protons in its nucleus. While neutrons and electrons are also part of an atom, the number of protons (the atomic number) determines the element’s identity. Neutrons, which have no charge, play a significant role in the stability of the nucleus but do not affect the chemical properties of the element as directly as protons do. The fundamentals of matter include electric charge: opposite charges attract, and like charges repel. Since neutrons are neutral, they do not interact electromagnetically with the charged particles (protons and electrons) in the same way.
Fun fact: The reason why neutrons stabilize the nucleus is because they create space between the protons, lessening the repulsion.
Atomic Number: All elements are organized by atomic number, which is the number of protons in the nucleus of an element. From hydrogen with 1 in the top left to lawrencium in the bottom right with 103.
Atomic Mass: The atomic mass is the combined mass of all protons, neutrons, and electrons in an atom. For reference, a proton weighs 1 amu (atomic mass unit). A neutron weighs 1.008 amu and an electron weighs much less at 0.00054858 amu.
Note: This mass measurement is an average across variations of the atom; atoms with more neutrons (isotopes) are included proportional to their rarity. An ideal hydrogen atom weighs 1.00054 amu because it has 1 proton, no neutrons, and 1 electron. Note that every ideal atom also has the same number of electrons as protons to balance out the charge. If there are fewer or more electrons in an atom, it is called an ion and has a positive or negative charge, respectively. Ions behave according to the electromagnetic forces that pull them toward oppositely charged particles.
Core Principles:
When I first try to understand complex topics such as chemistry, I develop a sense for the core principles. This allows you to build your knowledge from a foundation that won’t move without relying on memorization.
Chemical Reactions Occur Because of Charged Particles: The most basic way to understand chemical reactions is to think of elements striving for a state of neutral equilibrium, where the number of protons equals the number of electrons, resulting in balanced charges. However, if you introduce positively charged ions into a system with neutral atoms or molecules, these ions will attract electrons from the neutral particles or share electrons with them to achieve stability.
Chemical Reactions Conserve Mass: When predicting the products of a chemical reaction, remember that the number of each type of atom in the products must equal the number of each type of atom in the reactants.
The reaction to make a copper electrolyte is quite complex, and to understand what will happen, you need to consider some of the moving parts.
Here is a description of the reaction:
What Happens at the Anode (Positive Electrode):
Copper from the anode loses electrons and dissolves into the solution as copper ions.
Chloride ions are oxidized at the anode to produce chlorine gas.
This process is called oxidation. The copper atoms give up their electrons and become positively charged copper ions.
What Happens at the Cathode (Negative Electrode):
The positively charged hydrogen ions in the solution gain electrons from the cathode and form hydrogen gas.
This process is called reduction. The hydrogen ions pick up the electrons and combine to form hydrogen gas bubbles that you can see.
Why This Happens:
Electrons Flow: The power source pumps electrons into the cathode (negative electrode) and pulls them away from the anode (positive electrode).
Oxidation at Anode: At the anode, copper atoms lose electrons and go into the solution as copper ions. This happens because the anode is connected to the positive terminal of the power source, making it electron-deficient and encouraging the loss of electrons.
Reduction at Cathode: At the cathode, the excess electrons reduce the hydrogen ions in the solution to form hydrogen gas. This happens because the cathode is connected to the negative terminal of the power source, providing an abundance of electrons.
Overall Result:
Copper Dissolves: The copper electrode at the anode dissolves into the solution, forming copper ions.
Hydrogen Gas Forms: Hydrogen gas bubbles form at the cathode as hydrogen ions gain electrons.
Chlorine Gas: Chlorine gas is produced from the oxidation of chloride ions.
As you can see, chemistry is hard, and in order to understand any reaction, you need a lot of knowledge. Admittedly, I don’t understand it that well and could use some studying. I will do more posts in the future on the more detailed parts of chemistry in an attempt to teach myself. I hope you enjoyed this post. I am a bit out of my wheelhouse when talking about electrochemical reactions, but here we are. I will continue to try to electroplate things; my new electrolyte is currently brewing outside, this time with less salt.
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