From: Chris Zell
* A flow of current tears a couple Hydrogen atoms loose but somehow the now free Oxygen only appears a zillion skillion light years away (relative to being an atom) at the other electrode. How this communicates across a vast expanse of random billiard balls whacking around is beyond me. Chris - the spy part, and the 'impossible transfer' of oxygen over a relatively large distance -sounds much interesting as a fictional story, but the reality of the situation is much more mundane. No magic here, at least not until we bring in the "replacement actors" (fractional hydrogen etc). On the cathode, a "temporarily free" or transient proton (protons are almost always temporarily free) is "captured" by electrostatic attraction to the negative charge on the metal surface - and immediately pairs with another proton . but the molecular species that is left in the general vicinity of the "donor" water molecule, is the hydroxyl ion, not oxygen. And the ion does not need to go far to complete the transaction. This OH- ion which has lost a proton, and which is identical to all of the zillion, skillion other hydroxyls which are present in the electrolyte, does not really need to move more than a few angstroms spatially - since it has an identical twin, which is close to the anode, and it is that remote twin which provides the oxygen for the bubble forming over there on the anode . way, way over there. IOW any hydroxyl ion is "fungible" and only moves slowly although the net flow of current is rapid. So - in effect, the first hydroxy near the cathode is merely a replacement for another one, and for something which can happen later - and there is a slow migration, over millions of iterations - rather than a magical and instantaneous jump - over a vast expanse of little billiard balls. In a way this is similar to current flow in normal metal conduction where the so-called "drift velocity" of electrons is slow compared to the emf, which is about half of lightspeed in conductive metals. Jones
