The Riddle of Electrolysis

When Michael Faraday performed his electrochemical experiments, little was known about the relationship between matter and electricity. Chemists were still debating the existence of atoms, and the discovery of the electron was more than 50 years in the future. Combining his talents in electrical and chemical investigation, Faraday pointed researchers to the intimate connection between chemical reactions and electricity while setting the stage for the development of a new branch of chemistry. 

In 1800, Italian physicist Alessandro Volta introduced his voltaic pile, better known as the battery. The stack of alternating zinc and silver disks provided scientists with a source of electric current for the first time. 

That same year, chemists discovered a new phenomenon using Volta s device. They immersed the two poles of a battery at different locations in a container of water. The current caused the water to decompose into its elemental components, with hydrogen evolving at the positive pole of the battery and oxygen evolving at the negative pole. Similar experiments using solutions of certain solids dissolved in water resulted In 

The discovery of electrolysis led two pioneering chemists to ponder the connection between chemical forces and electricity. One of the chemists was Humphry Davy, who thought that chemical bonding must be driven by the same forces that drive electrical attractions. 

The Swedish chemist Jons Jacob Berzelius took Davy s idea a step further. He postulated that matter consisted of combinations of electropositive and electronegative substances, classifying the parts by the pole at which they accumulated during electrolysis. 

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