Ohh... Glad my parents didn't know about this when I did the experiment...

A while back I was doing a demonstration on electrolisys for a friend. With the intent of turning water into oxygen gas and hydrogen gas. But that particular night I decided to improve the current flow by adding some simple table salt. Knowing a bit about chemistry, when the thing started emitting a visible vapor, I shut down the experiment and immediately disposed of my experiment. Good thing I did! I was doing some research on the manufacture of bleach and discovered something: I was in the process of manufacturing not 1, not 2, but 3 very hazardous chemicals (2 of which I know how to handle.) Apparently, salt water, when exposed to a significant electric current, produces three chemicals: NaOH^-, H₂, and Cl₂. For those of you who don't know what those are, I'll explain them to you. NaOH^- is Sodium Hydroxide, which has the common name of Lye. This is a VERY strong base and direct skin contact (with some water) can cause severe chemical burns. Nasty stuff (but a very useful base in diluted solution). H₂ is Hydrogen Gas. This was an intended result of my experiment. Hydrogen gas is highly flammable and will explode if mixed with Oxygen gas (O₂) and given a spark. (The best explosions come form an environment with a 2:1 Hydrogen:Oxygen ratio.) The final result Cl₂ is Chlorine gas. This gas is highly toxic and will kill you in any reasonable concentration. Interestingly, it is found at swimming pools that use Chlorine bleach (a special compound made by mixing a NaOH^- solution with chlorine gas, manufactured by companies like Clorox,) as their disinfectant. Chlorine gas give swimming pools their distinctive "pool" smell.

There's only one thing I couldn't figure out: the vapor I was getting was orange/red not green like Chlorine gas. I have two theories about this. The first one comes from the electrodes that I used to energize the water. I was using alligator clips, so there was a chance that one of the products could have reacted with the clips (made of either aluminum, steel, or zinc, I can't remember) and caused the altered result. The second was the fact that it was iodized salt. This means that the salt contained trace quantities of iodine. This could have reacted (probably with the Hydrogen or the Sodium Hydroxide) and caused the additional colored byproduct.

In any of the above cases, I won't be doing that exact experiment again for a while (Unless I have an on the spot need for Sodium Hydroxide solution, and can do the process outside where the amount of Chlorine gas released is trivial).