Water Splitting

Plants absorb energy from the sun so they can do photosynthesis- turning sunlight, water, and CO2 into an energy form more useful to plants, sugar! Now here comes the important question: is there a way to turn sunlight into an energy form more useful to humans? Scientists at CCI Solar are working on that very problem. They are mimicking plants by using the energy from sunlight to split water (H2O) back into hydrogen (H2) and oxygen (O2). The sun’s energy is now stored as chemical energy, to be retrieved later when the sun isn’t shining. Try your hand at splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen to see how this process works.