[constant thinker]

I got into an argument with my Dad about wheather or not a 9V battery could be used to seperate water into Hydrogen and Oxygen. I've done hydrolisis before. I usually set it up with copper wiring leading from a 9V battery that is then wrapped around an insulator in a coil. The coils are placed into water that has a lot of salt in it (for conducting purposes). This time though I just used aluminum foil wrapped tightly into a wire.

After said expirement was all done, I got a white suspension floating on top of my salt water solution. It was congealing on the top. Yet another odd thing was there was another white substance congealing on the bottom of the glass.

This has never happened before. Does anybody know what the white stuff could be? My guess is it's Aluminum oxide on the bottom and on top I have no clue.

[rywilbe]

well if the water is saturated, the stuff on the bottom is probably salt. i couldn't tell you what is on the top. I don't think aluminum oxide is on the bottom. i could be wrong.  

[constant thinker]

I found out that the stuff on top was the same as the stuff on the bottom. It was suspended there by bubbles. I added more water and tried to stir it in. It isn't absorbed by the water. This leads me to conclude that it's not salt.

Is there and aluminum oxide that's white? If so I'm guessing then that the particles are small enough to be held in temporary suspension because they later settle at the bottom.

Another question is.. Would a 9V battery be capable of breaking the bond between the Na and Cl in the salt?

[Mitch]

Aluminum Oxide sounds right.

[Oldtimer]

Remember Al Foil isn't 100% Al.A good portion of it is Tin I think

Aluminum Foil Deflector Beanie
*BEWARE OF COMMERCIAL AFDBS: Since you should trust no one, always construct your AFDB yourself to avoid the risk of subversion and mental enslavement. Sometimes, AFDBs will be sold on places like eBay. Do not purchase these pre-made AFDBs, even if the seller seems trustworthy. They may contain backdoors, pinholes, integrated psychotronic circuitry or other methods that actually promote mind control.* :crazyeyes:

[billnotgatez]

No entry found for hydrolisis

[movies]

Does foil really contain tin anymore?  I thought they switched to aluminum becuase tin can be pretty toxic (at least organotins are).  I seem to remember a lab we did in high school where we dissolved the Al from aluminum foil and I recall that there was something else in the foil that didn't dissolve.  I thought my teacher said that it was mostly carbon from the alloy they used to make the foil.

[Oldtimer]

There are newer additives to Al foil to make it nonstick which involves a polymer coating. A plastic, which also helps it burn I suppose.

"Forensic Comparison of Household Aluminum Foils Using Elemental Composition by Inductively Coupled Plasma—Atomic Emission Spectrometry
Koons RD, Peters CA, Merrill RA

Abstract
Inductively coupled plasma-atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES) provides the precision, sensitivity, and specificity for element concentration determinations required for good discrimination among sources of household aluminum foil. The concentrations of copper (Cu), gallium (Ga), iron (Fe), magnesium (Mg), manganese (Mn), titanium (Ti), vanadium (V), and zinc (Zn) were determined in aluminum foil by ICP-AES with analytical precisions (rsd) in the 1 to 2% range and nickel (Ni) and silicon (Si) with analytical precisions of about 5%. For these ten elements, the combined analytical uncertainties and variations along the length of a single roll of foil are much smaller than the variations from roll to roll, both within a single brand and across brands."
http://journalsip.astm.org/JOURNALS/FORENSIC/PAGES/1883.htm

Beware of this google type of search, you may end up in foils of Barium and such for NASA materials sscientists. It's a futile search nearly.

Andy

[movies]

No tin though?  I'm surprised they didn't at least detect traces.  Unless there was so much tin that they didn't mention it in the abstract.  I don't have access to the full article though.

[Oldtimer]

Aluminum would seem to be a weak metal, likely to tear just bending it around a cakepan without something more substantial to hold it together. Other than the Forensic article, all I could find were explosive properties of aluminum foil with caustic substances.

Isn't tin a magnetic material though? If so, then a magnet should be able o slightly suspend a ball of foil. Or at least try to move it. I can't get it to do anything. A resistivety test is all I can do otherwise.

This is interesting;
Window glass is most often made via floating molten glass on top of molten tin (creating float glass) in order to make a flat surface (this is called the "Pilkington process").
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin