[UFO Chicago] Hydrogen gas?

[Williamson, Brad]

Electrolysis of water would certainly work as well, and is easy to do
unless you plan on recompressing it. If you plan on filling a (small)
"hot air balloon" type of thing, it would be fairly simple to do. I have
not done the math to see how much H2 gas you would need for 30 pounds of
lift, but I would start here:

http://www.chem.uiuc.edu/clcwebsite/elec.html

Generally, one electrode bubbles H2, and the other bubbles O2, you need
a contraption to capture the H2 bubbles on their way out of the water,
so an inverted container over the H2 side electrode should suffice. How
much voltage? How to get it? Will it explode? These are questions left
to the character wanting to levitate things with Hydrogen ;-)

I would use distilled water, less of a short-circuit effect...

Science class was fun!  (Booom!)

Brad

-----Original Message-----
From: ufo-bounces at ufo.chicago.il.us
[mailto:ufo-bounces at ufo.chicago.il.us] On Behalf Of Neil R. Ormos
Sent: Tuesday, June 14, 2005 2:44 PM
To: Jordan Bettis
Cc: ufo at ufo.chicago.il.us
Subject: Re: [UFO Chicago] Hydrogen gas?

On Tue, 14 Jun 2005, Jordan Bettis wrote:

> I got a good (bad?) idea to build something that could use hydrogen 
> gas as a levitant. My question is, is it easily obtainable and cheap?
> Where would I go to get it? I shouldn't need large quantities (enough 
> to lift 30 pounds or so).

I believe the easiest source for Hydrogen is a welding supply, but I
don't know whether the Hydrogen you get there is adulterated with some
denser gas that would render it useless for lifting.  You might also try
one of the industrial gas suppliers: Airco, Praxair, etc.

--neil


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