Lab:Exploding bubbles of hydrogen and oxygen
From Learn Chemistry Wiki
|Exploding bubbles of hydrogen and oxygen|
| Lab overview|
|About this lab|
| Duration: 10-15 mins|
No. of parts: 2
RSC Practical Chemistry?: No
This demonstration involves electrolysing sulfuric acid and the explosive re-combination of the hydrogen and oxygen. It is an alternative to experiment 70: Hydrogen/oxygen explosion and can be used if you school doesn’t have soldering equipment. Please note this method is considered slightly more hazardous by CLEAPSS® than experiment 70.
Exploding stoichiometric (exactly reacting) mixtures of hydrogen and oxygen on a large scale can shatter glass apparatus and laboratory windows (flying glass may cause injury) and permanently damage the hearing of people in the same room. It is recommended that this reaction is done ONLY on the small scale as described below and in experiment 70.
- Student experiment; also available in PDF format
- Teacher and technician notes on the experiment; also available in PDF format
This experiment was written by Mike Thompson on behalf of the RSC. For a related experiment see Practical Chemistry: http://www.practicalchemistry.org/experiments/exploding-bubbles-of-hydrogen-and-oxygen,158,EX.html