Hi Horace,
The reason the conduction of water is said to be caused by ions is
because pure water is essentially an insulator. In fact, the purity of
water is normally measured by measuring its conductivity. As for the
speed of ions, an individual ion moves only a very short distance. This
is like electron conduction in a metal. When the field is changed, the
whole electron collection or, in this case, ion collection moves as a
unit all at the same time instantaneously, i.e. with a speed of light
reaction time.
A third electrode in an electrolytic can be thought of as two cells in
series, with one side of the third electrode being the cathode to one
cell and the other side being the anode to the other cell. As a result,
nothing special is created.
Ed
Horace Heffner wrote:
On Aug 26, 2007, at 9:06 AM, Stiffler Scientific wrote:
A
conversion (in some) way takes place by interaction of this control
electrode and the ions which allow electrons to flow in the control
electrode without gas production. There appears to be what? (an
increase of
electrons) or some incomplete guess at my tunneling idea.
I don't know the nature of your experiments, but it is important to
consider that almost no conduction takes place via electrons in water
electrolytes - most all the current is via ions, and mostly through
proton conduction. An amazing thing is that most conduction in
electrolytic cells is, according to Bockris, a venerable
electrochemist, due to ordinary ion diffusion. The reason he says this
is the potential drops are almost entirely right up next to the
electrodes. One interesting thing about inserting a third electrode in
there is you are essentially dropping the voltage drops for the primary
electrode interfaces, because the third electrode has to support its
own interface potential drops as well in order to conduct. Until the
third (middle) electrode conducts it is merely increasing the cell DC
resistance, though it does conduct capacitively - and the higher the
frequency the more so.
I have to say, despite my admiration for Bockris, I'm not sure I buy
the "conduction by diffusion" argument, though. I experimented with a
10 m long electrolytic cell and got within an order of magnitude light
speed DC conduction rise times (which I consider to be way different
from AC conduction, which can be by EM surface wave.) I should redo
that very confused and amateurish work now I have better equipment and
a better handle on basic physics. Here is a summary of my 1996
experiments:
http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/Ecell10m.pdf
I think there has not been nearly enough basic physics done in this
arena. Here is a neat group working on "Soft Condensed Matter" at least:
http://softsolids.physics.uq.edu.au/our_research.html
It may be of interest that actual proton conduction in water is
considered by Bockris to be 100 percent by tunneling followed by H3O+
ion rotation. It may be of possible use to compare ice conductivity to
water conductivity to distinguish tunneling conduction from ion diffusion.
Richard I have a 'stupid' formulation that has proved extremely
accurate in
the calculation of the added energy obtained from the cell. Yet if I
publish
it here I will never hear the end of it due to its apparent non-sense
nature.
But what the heck, maybe at the 'Dime Box' after a few pickled eggs
and a
few brew, something funny might help 'clear the air'.
Eg = (Vs * Is) - (( Is * Na * ec ) / f)
Eg - energy gain
Vs - source or supply voltage
Is - supply current (amps)
Na -Avogadro's number
ec - Electron charge
f - pulse freq. 50% duty cycle
There is something wrong with the above equation. The (Vs * Is) part
is in watts. The (( Is * Na * ec ) / f) part is in coulombs^2/mole.
When you subtract them you don't get either energy or power.
Horace Heffner
http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/
