At 03:19 PM 7/11/2012, Nigel Dyer wrote:
I would agree that looking at the physical state of the water/bubbles at the surface of the electrode is a good idea. There was some work done many years ago on the sound of various chemical reactions. The sound of jelly setting was particularly odd (another situation where water is important). It was never followed up to the best of my knowledge
It's not a bad idea at all. However, the idea that a bunch of bubbles are blown away at once could explain a transient reduction in resistance, but not a sustained one, which is often seen.
It would be easy to see a bubble noise effect in the raw data, collected without the averaging that is often done (because researchers are generally interested in total heat input, integrated over time). Bubble noise would completely -- or largely -- disappear for a time until new bubbles built up to be released. The resistance would gradually rise until bubbles were replaced. There would be an "echo" of the effect as the new bubbles would *tend* to be released at the same time. I don't think this matches the data I've seen. At all.
Yes, monitoring of cell sound would also show this effect, in various ways. It would also show an effect from any event that generates high local heat, enough to suddenly boil the water in a small volume.
