Do you want to build a fuel cell?
|
| No problem. For this purpose,
two platinum wires are needed which act as electrodes. All other ingredients will be found
in the kitchen cupboard, tool-box or supermarket. |
| We need the catalytic activity
of the platinum surface. Otherwise a fuel cell would not work at room temperature. |
| The effects can be seen on a
voltmeter: they appear as quite a high voltage of about 1.4 V, i.e. they are easily
detectable. But the fuel cell is too weak to drive a lamp or motor. The small power output
is a result of the low surface area of our platinum electrodes. |
| In this case, we would rather
advise you to buy a kit containing a higher power fuel cell which, however, will be quite
uninstructive since one cannot see how it works. Teachers who want to deal with the fuel
cell in physics or chemistry classes will want to have both: a small gas battery for
eperimentation by the pupils and a professional fuel cell that can do more work than just
operate a voltmeter. |
| The next page shows the
experiment in little movies. |
|