Paul Catterson, age 11, of Salem Oregon, for his question:

How does electrolysis work?

Electrolysis works without the help of human hands. Therefore, it must substitute some !rind of energy for muscle poorer. It draws its basic woric energy from an electric current . Tiocn it uses this depends upon the clever 'tnorr hoot of human ninds. The trick is in using, electric energy to create selected chemical reactions. These reactions transfer particles from one substance to another dreamers dreamed for apes of moving, mountains and, to some extent, mighty modern machines made the miracle possible. On an invisibly small scale, electrolysis moves things from here to there, fragment by fragment., It needs no monstrous equipment or brute force. The secret lies in using chemistry skills to perform mini miracles with electricity.

The equipment is an electrolytic cell, which may be quite small. Basically it is a then fitted with an opposite pair of electrodes attached to two ends of line from an electric circuit. The electric power must be direct current, perhaps from a smallish battery.

The tank contains an electrolyte, a chemical solution known to be a top notch conductor of electricity. It may contain certain metallic salts, acids or bases. Often the electrolyte is a solution of silver cyanide. The materials selected for the opposite electrodes depend on the job to be done. These are submersed in the chemical bath and then the current is turned on they act as an anode and a cathode.

Suppose you wish to surface a copper spoon with silver. The spoon is set up to act as the cathode. The anode is a hat of silver. The mini miracle is performed by electrons, those negatively charged particles that scram around the positive nucleus of the atom.

Zillions of electrons are attached to atoms and molecules in the electrodes. An atom or molecule is electrically neutral when its number of negative electrons equals its positive protons. But when the current is turned on, swarms of electrons use its energy to leave home. A molecule that gains an electron gains an extra negative charge and becomes a negative ion. If it loses an electron it is left with an extra positive charge and becomes a positive ion.

In electrical matters, positives repel each other. So do negatives. But opposites  attract each other. Ions from the silver electrode gravitate naturally to the cathode and coat its copper spoon with silver.

Electrolysis is used for numerous operations to transfer one substance to another, molecule by molecule. Most of this work is electroplating, such as coating a spoon of inexpensive copper with silver. The molecules lost by the anode are gained by the cathode. In this case, the silver anode is worn down by chemical erosion and its molecules transfer themselves to the spoon.