how do you break water down into hydrogen and oxygen?
461954
Apply an electric current. The hydrogen and oxygen atoms will be seperated from one another. The hydrogen atoms will be attracted to the negative pole, the oxygens will migrate to the positve poles.\n\nThey can be collected in gaseous forms if you have the poles isolated from one another.\n\nBoiling it will do nothing but convert water molecules from their liquid form to a gaseous state. The molecules will still be intact.
565188
water is  H2O, it's two separate element on the periodic chart - H for hydrogen and O for oxygen.
167961
To put it simply,\nHydrogen fusion works by fusing two Hydrogen atoms into a Helium atom.  This process gives off a lot of energy, which is the source of the sun power.\nIt takes incredible heat and pressure for this nuclear reaction to occur, this is definatly not something you do in your back yard.\n\nFor more detailed info,\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fusion\n\nIt is quite easy to seperate Hydrogen gas from water in a process called "electrolysis".  By passing an electric current through water with a dissolved electrolyte, it is possible to split water into Hydrogen and Oxygen gas.  There are actually numerous other ways of producing Hydrogen gas, but non as well known as electrolysis.
248810
It's a matter of thermodynamics.  The end product of burning hydrogen with oxygen in an engine, or recombining it in a fuel cell, is water.  So, if you're going from water to hydrogen and oxygen, and then back to water when you burn it, the heat given off by the chemical reaction you're using to power the engine is the same as the amount of energy it took to split the hydrogen from the water in the first place.  Add to this the limitations of efficiency on engines, or any other device, and it ends up being impossible to have an engine that runs on water.  If you have some other power source, you can use this to split the hydrogen, and then burn it in your engine, but then the energy really isn't coming from the water being used as a fuel, you're just using the hydrogen to carry the energy from your power source to your engine.  \n\nNow, if you had a pure fluorine atmosphere, you could burn water in an engine, but I'm not sure what you could make an engine out of such that it wouldn't be destroyed by the fluorine!
738402
Attach a bare wire to each terminal and dip the ends of both in salty water. Bubbles will form near the wires as the electricity breaks the water and salt molecules into their constituent gaseous elements. \n\nBy the way, with salty water you will get hydrogen and chlorine, but not oxygen. The salt is needed to make the water conduct electricity, but it also prevents you from getting oxygen gas from the water. You can do this experiment without the salt, but you will need WAY more than 9 volts. In that case you would get oxygen.
1111771
two parts hydrogen.......one part oxygen...hence.....H2O
6256
Simple and complex techniques exist to split such atoms.  For example a high powered laser can split that into h2 and 0.\n\n:) That's a very simple way of doing it.\n\nElectrolosis also splits water into hydrogen and oxygen.
967355
try thinking about the energy needed to break the ionic bonds. water can be split, but the energy needed is massive, because the bonds are so stable
560206
Production\n\nOn Earth, semiheavy water, HDO, occurs naturally in regular water at a proportion of about 1 molecule in 3200. This means that 1 in 6400 hydrogen atoms is deuterium (see VSMOW), which is 1 part in 3200 by weight (hydrogen weight). The HDO may be separated from regular water by distillation or electrolysis and also by various chemical exchange processes, all of which exploit a kinetic isotope effect. In short, the difference in mass between the two hydrogen isotopes translates into a difference in the zero-point energy and thus into a slight difference in the speed at which the reaction proceeds. Once HDO becomes a significant fraction of the water, heavy water will become more prevalent as water molecules trade hydrogen atoms very frequently. To produce pure heavy water by distillation or electrolysis requires a large cascade of stills or electrolysis chambers, and consumes large amounts of power, so the chemical methods are generally preferred. The most important chemical method is the Girdler Sulfide process.
749628
from my chemistry days we would use a 250 ml GLASS beaker and two GLASS testtubes to conduct electrolysis of water but it was only temporary the hydrogen would eventualy escape. now how to keep it pressurized is a little bit harder good luck finding that out.
987656
Simplest example: water, H2O is a liquid, non-flammable, compound made from hydrogen, H2 and oxygen, O2, which are both gasses and very reactive. \n\nAnother: iron, Fe, is a shiny strong metal, while rust FeO2 is a red-brown fragile dust.
195964
Water is one of those elements that was here from the start.  Some say it was created by God, some say it was part of some cosmic big bang that started everything.  Either way, it's formed by oxygen and hydrogen forming molecules.  One of oxygen and two of Hydrogen.  You can separate them by putting wires on a flashlight battery and sticking the wires in water.  One wire will generate oxygen bubbles, the other will generate hydrogen bubbles.  With enough hydrogen, you could make your own Hindenburg disaster.
640887
No, they break up water molecules into oxygen and the rest they use.
291231
H2O...two parts hydrogen and 1 part oxygen in each of the water molecules.
850750
The two hydrogen atoms' single electrons fill the outer shell of the oxygen atom... this makes water (mostly) chemically inert.  Since combustion is simply rapid oxidation... it could be argued that the hydrogen is already oxidized... making water...\n\nElectrolysis can seperate the hydrogen and oxygen... but this is not combustion.
571042
if you combine it like that you won't get nothing. if u combine one molecule of oxygen, O2, and two of hydrogen, H2, than you'll get water, if you combine one O and one H you'll get an anion HO- , and in H2O2 it's a compound where the oxygen anion is O- and normally it's always O2-. at least that's the way i know it!
311730
I think you should keep it simple yet smart. First get a piece of pure elemental Sodium and then let it drop on warm water. Afterwards explain how the chemical reaction released Sodium Oxide and Hydrogen Gas.