If........?

Question

If you take a bottle/jar/whatever of hydrogen and open it inside, will it start to rain? 2 Hydrogen molecules and 1 Oxygen molecule make water, so won't releasing hydrogen into the air, where there is oxygen, create water/rain? If not, then why?

Answer 1

There is already hydrogen in the air, so just releasing more would not cause water to form.

If you had a spark, you could create water by igniting the hydrogen in an atmosphere with oxygen present, but there is an activation barrier that must be overcome to cause hydrogen and oxygen to react to form water.

Answer 2

Hydrogen gas is H2 (H-H), Oxygen is O2 (O-O) and both gases are quite happy the way they are. You could only force the gases to form water under extreme conditions by adding a LOT of energy in. There is a high activation energy to have this equation go to completion:

2(H2) + 1(O2) ---> 2(H2O)

Note that I didn't say "heat," because both H2 and O2 are extremely flammable. This is also fruitles since water is so widely available. You can have the reaction go the other way (water to H2 and O2 gas) - I believe you can input energy from an electrical source (like a battery) to do this. It's fairly simple.

Answer 3

no you need heat to bind elements to create compounds, also it would need to be pure hydrogen and oxygen I believe.