Faraday-efficiency Effect
The Faraday-efficiency effect refers to the potential for misinterpretation of data from experiments in electrochemistry through failure to take into account a Faraday efficiency of less than 100 percent. Assumption about efficiency Until recent decades it was common to assume that the release of hydrogen and oxygen gas during electrolysis of water always has a Faraday efficiency of 100%. Pons and Fleischmann, and other investigators who reported the finding of anomalous excess heat in electrolytic cells, all relied on this popular assumption. No one bothered to measure the Faraday efficiency in their cells during the experiments. Many publications reporting the finding of excess heat included an explicit statement like: "The Faraday efficiency is assumed to be unity." Even if not explicitly stated so, these publications included this implicit assumption in the formulas used to calculate the cells' energy balance. Relevance to cold fusion Lacking any other plausible explanation, th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Electrochemistry
Electrochemistry is the branch of physical chemistry concerned with the relationship between electrical potential difference, as a measurable and quantitative phenomenon, and identifiable chemical change, with the potential difference as an outcome of a particular chemical change, or vice versa. These reactions involve electrons moving via an electronically-conducting phase (typically an external electrical circuit, but not necessarily, as in electroless plating) between electrodes separated by an ionically conducting and electronically insulating electrolyte (or ionic species in a solution). When a chemical reaction is driven by an electrical potential difference, as in electrolysis, or if a potential difference results from a chemical reaction as in an electric battery or fuel cell, it is called an ''electrochemical'' reaction. Unlike in other chemical reactions, in electrochemical reactions electrons are not transferred directly between atoms, ions, or molecules, but via the af ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Faraday Efficiency
Faraday efficiency (also called ''faradaic efficiency'', ''faradaic yield'', ''coulombic efficiency'' or ''current efficiency'') describes the efficiency with which charge (electrons) is transferred in a system facilitating an electrochemical reaction. The word "Faraday" in this term has two interrelated aspects. First, the historic unit for charge is the faraday, but has since been replaced by the coulomb. Secondly, the related Faraday's constant correlates charge with moles of matter and electrons (amount of substance). This phenomenon was originally understood through Michael Faraday's work and expressed in his laws of electrolysis. Sources of faradaic loss Faradaic losses are experienced by both electrolytic and galvanic cells when electrons or ions participate in unwanted side reactions. These losses appear as heat and/or chemical byproducts. An example can be found in the oxidation of water to oxygen at the positive electrode in electrolysis. Some electrons are diverte ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Electrolysis
In chemistry and manufacturing, electrolysis is a technique that uses direct electric current (DC) to drive an otherwise non-spontaneous chemical reaction. Electrolysis is commercially important as a stage in the separation of elements from naturally occurring sources such as ores using an electrolytic cell. The voltage that is needed for electrolysis to occur is called the decomposition potential. The word "lysis" means to separate or break, so in terms, electrolysis would mean "breakdown via electricity". Etymology The word "electrolysis" was introduced by Michael Faraday in 1834, using the Greek words "amber", which since the 17th century was associated with electrical phenomena, and ' meaning "dissolution". Nevertheless, electrolysis, as a tool to study chemical reactions and obtain pure elements, precedes the coinage of the term and formal description by Faraday. History In the early nineteenth century, William Nicholson and Anthony Carlisle sought to further Volt ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Cold Fusion
Cold fusion is a hypothesized type of nuclear reaction that would occur at, or near, room temperature. It would contrast starkly with the "hot" fusion that is known to take place naturally within stars and artificially in hydrogen bombs and prototype fusion reactors under immense pressure and at temperatures of millions of degrees, and be distinguished from muon-catalyzed fusion. There is currently no accepted theoretical model that would allow cold fusion to occur. In 1989, two electrochemists, Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, reported that their apparatus had produced anomalous heat ("excess heat") of a magnitude they asserted would defy explanation except in terms of nuclear processes. They further reported measuring small amounts of nuclear reaction byproducts, including neutrons and tritium. ("It is inconceivable that this mount of heatcould be due to anything but nuclear processes... We realise that the results reported here raise more questions than they provide a ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Implicit Assumption
A tacit assumption or implicit assumption is an assumption that underlies a logical argument, course of action, decision, or judgment that is not explicitly voiced nor necessarily understood by the decision maker or judge. These assumptions may be made based on personal life experiences, and are not consciously apparent in the decision making environment. These assumptions can be the source of apparent paradoxes, misunderstandings and resistance to change in human organizational behavior. See also * Assumption-based planning * Consensus reality * Hidden curriculum * Implicit attitude * Implicit cognition * Implicit leadership theory * Implicit memory * Implied consent * Leading question * Premise * Presupposition * Shattered assumptions theory * Subreption * Tacit knowledge * Unsaid * Unspoken rule Unwritten rules (synonyms: Unspoken rules) are behavioral constraints imposed in organizations or societies that are not typically voiced or written down. They usually exist in unsp ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Stanley Pons
Bobby Stanley Pons (born August 23, 1943) is an American electrochemist known for his work with Martin Fleischmann on cold fusion in the 1980s and 1990s. Early life Pons was born in Valdese, North Carolina. He attended Valdese High School, then Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where he studied chemistry. He began his PhD studies in chemistry at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, but left before completing his PhD. His thesis resulted in a paper, co-authored in 1967 with Harry B. Mark, his adviser. ''The New York Times'' wrote that it pioneered a way to measure the spectra of chemical reactions on the surface of an electrode. He decided to finish his PhD in England at the University of Southampton, where in 1975 he met Martin Fleischmann. Pons was a student in Alan Bewick's group; he earned his PhD in 1978. Career On March 23, 1989, while Pons was the chairman of the chemistry department at the University of Utah, he and Fleischmann announced the ex ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Martin Fleischmann
Martin Fleischmann FRS (29 March 1927 – 3 August 2012) was a British chemist who worked in electrochemistry. By Associated Press. Premature announcement of his cold fusion research with Stanley Pons, regarding excess heat in heavy water, caused a media sensation and elicited skepticism and criticism from many in the scientific community. Personal life Fleischmann was born in Karlovy Vary, Czechoslovakia, in 1927. His father was a wealthy lawyer and his mother the daughter of a high-ranking Austrian civil officer. Since his father was of Jewish heritage, Fleischmann's family moved to the Netherlands, and then to England in 1938, to avoid Nazi persecution. His father died of the complications of injuries received in a Nazi prison, after which Fleischmann lived for a period with his mother in a leased cottage in Rustington, Sussex. His early education was obtained at Worthing High School for Boys. After serving in the Czech Airforce Training Unit during the war, he moved ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Calorimeter
A calorimeter is an object used for calorimetry, or the process of measuring the heat of chemical reactions or physical changes as well as heat capacity. Differential scanning calorimeters, isothermal micro calorimeters, titration calorimeters and accelerated rate calorimeters are among the most common types. A simple calorimeter just consists of a thermometer attached to a metal container full of water suspended above a combustion chamber. It is one of the measurement devices used in the study of thermodynamics, chemistry, and biochemistry. To find the enthalpy change per mole of a substance A in a reaction between two substances A and B, the substances are separately added to a calorimeter and the initial and final temperatures (before the reaction has started and after it has finished) are noted. Multiplying the temperature change by the mass and specific heat capacities of the substances gives a value for the energy given off or absorbed during the reaction. Dividing t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |