Salt Bridges *Anyone who is good in Chemistry*

I need help with my research. I am making a battery using zinc nitrate and zinc metal, copper nitrate and copper metal. I got the battery to work. I just need to increase the current. I heated the battery up. It increased the current from 2 milliamps to 4 milliamps. In order to power this motor I need to get the current up to 15 milliamps. My professor deemed this impossible since the battery was heated in water. (I couldnt the water past 97 degrees) I need to know if they are any items I could use as a salt bridge. A salt bridge just helps electrons flow through a solution. I have a little glass one, and I made one out of a disc and that didnt work. Give me any suggestions that you have.

Thank you.

... x.X Wow, it's super-hard to get a homemade battery up that high... I'll tell you, though, if you can find *any* sort of way to increase the heat just a bit more, it'll work a bit better.

If you put larger concentrations of zinc and copper nitrate, also, into your water, that will help a ton...

Finally, little glass salt bridges only work well on stuff with higher currents than what you have on hand. A concentration of KCl mixed with water poured onto a coffee filter usually works really well for this sort of thing, but NaCl works rather well and is certainly a lot easier for most people to get. ^^;

Hopefully that helps a bit. ^^;;;;

ouch, electrode potentials, got my exams on that on konday

Perhaps if you raised the boiling point of the water that you're heating? Say, by adding salt to it? Or, you could heat a liquid with a higher boiling point. Now, a salt bridge... It helps electrons flow through a solution, you say? Well, wouldn't salt work? Just increase the salt concentration of the eloctrolyte, and that should help raise your current. Also, try reducing the amount of resistance in your wires. That would help increase your current, I think. Trust me on this, I did a science project on batteries, and I aced it. In fact, I almost went to state competitions with it. The one after it on concrete did, though.

Edit: Oops, you're not talking about what I'm talking about. Well, do you have to use a salt bridge? Because salt is a conducter of electricity, if I remember correctly. Yes, it is, because of the way it breaks down in the water. Although the sodium and chloride atoms seperate, they are made into ions, which will act like salt when both are present in the water.

'Nother edit: Send me a diagram of your battery and circuit, okay? I may be able to help you out a bit. I may only be a freshman in high school, but I'm a wizz on this stuff. ...There you go, wizz. Or wee, pee, urine, whatever you want to call it. I think that'd be a very good conducter of electricity, because of the high salt content.

well in my text book, it says a salt bridge can be made out of filter paper dissolved in potassium nitrate! hope that helped

Yesterday, I got my redox reaction high enough, to 100 milliamps!!!!

The new cell worked like a charm. I used these two plastic pipes to hold large concentrations of the liquids. I used two sponges as salt bridges, I also made the copper and zinc electrodes bigger as well. I have to give a presentation of my research on friday, which is my last day at UNI. Im free!!! For four weeks until I start my freshman year at Iowa anyway.

well done

i got my chemistry results coming out next month

Nice job!

Besides the "obvious" *chuckles* solution which you came up with concerning molecular surface areas, I had another idea... While heating up the liquid surrounding the tubes (and thus the tubes themselves) WILL, as you know already, speed up the reaction to a point, it will also impede the flow of electrons in the wire. IF, however, you were able to simultaneously COOL the wire, your current would increase dramatically as the resistance (or impedance, if you will) of the system decreases.