So it's not a water powered car, it's a hydrogen powered car.

is there a difference between a chemical reaction and a nuclear reaction?

"Tata has given $15 million to fund the research being conducted by MIT professor Daniel Nocera on using water as auto fuel. The project involves generating hydrogen by splitting water and storing it in a safe can to drive an automobile"

*water as auto fuel*

Generating hydrogen from the water, yes

Jesus fucking christ the <:thonk:397491814539591701> here is incredible.

@Deleted User In a chemical reaction you don't split the atom

What are all of you, 12? Not yet having completed the most basic courses in chemistry and/or physics in middle school?

it's not about splitting atoms though

Water itself -cannot- be used as a fuel

it's separating molecules

Chemical reactions happens with the electrons.

You can split water up into hydrogen and oxygen, which can be combined to either combust (I.E., run a standard internal combustion engine on them) or be used in hydrogen fuel cells (where basically the same thing happens, the recombination of hydrogen and oxygen into water, but via a circuitous route that produces electricity) but running any kind of engine on straight water is not possible, because anything you do with water requires more energy to do that thing to it than you'd get from any process that produces energy from it.

separating water into hydrogen and oxygen isnt a nuclear reaction right?

No, it isn't.

It's chemical.

thats what i thought

so it's not a nuclear reactor Baraban

I remember someone on the internet referring to it as a nuclear reactor

Well, someone on the internet claims it, that must mean they're right.

But I guess it shouldn't really be

I think it was on Linus Tech Tips

maybe they were talking about an actual nuclear powered car, not the water one

Even Black Science Man didn't know about the practical details of water electrolysis. He thought the Space Shuttle could be fueled by just breaking down water. Somebody corrected him, it's way too inefficient to do it that way, they just collect hydrogen from oil wells, and oxygen from the atmosphere.

Exactly. Splitting up water via electrolysis is not a viable way of producing fuel.

The oxygen in particular, is nasty to whatever conductor you're using.

It's done on nuclear submarines because they have power to spare, but even there, they're changing out electrolysis plants for reverse osmosis plants.

which is why i dont get why these people are trying it now

All science textbooks talk about how you can do it at home, everyone who tries it, finds no oxygen at all, only hydrogen. Because the oxygen corrodes the terminal.

maybe they are just that far behind, and cant use the internet

The oxygen does get produced, it just reacts with whatever metal is being used for the conductor.

Not easy to find metal that won't get corroded.

You'd need a platinum or gold electrode to actually see the bubbles go.

So, to summarize

No, they're not making a water powered car, they're making a hydrogen powered car

Water is a very low energy state molecule, that's why burning hydrogen with oxygen releases energy and creates water.

Yeah, but in marketing language it sounds much better to say water powered, because there's just so much water on the earth! <:pepe_smug:378719408341909506>

At least we can drink water, much better to use as energy source some dark sludge that's otherwise useless, that's just laying there underground.

https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1011924706524585984

>otherwise useless

No, it's kinda really fundamentally needed in the production of this thing called plastics. Without oil, no plastics.