Hi I have a few questions on electricity and chemistry, thanks for the help
1) How does electron flow?
When I have a simple circuit say a battery connected with a wire from the positive end to the negative end, the way i think electrons flow is like this:
1 electron from negative end of battery comes out and displaces the electron in the wire. While that happens the electron in the metal also displaces the next electron in the metal and this process goes all the way to the postive end. At the positive end an electron from the metal is being displaced into the battery.
So if this were the case, the 'net' displacement for the electron to move from the negative the the positive end is just the time taken for the electron to move out and displace the other electrons from the wire. In other words the flow is instantaneous. Meaning if i set 1 'net' electron to flow from that light bulb case, and i compare 2 different types of wires with different conductivities, the wire that has more resistance would be harder to displace so it would take longer to displace an electron from it. But still the instant the electron from the negative end completely displaces that electron in the metal, so would the electron in the metal completely displace the electron in the positive end of the battery.
However, when i watch lightning strike like this
http://www.gifbin.com/982185 it appears that the electron takes a while to reach the other end. Also I'm not too sure if I'm having the right thought process.. I learned that V=RI and when learning that it shows that the higher resistance only reduces the number of electrons per second and it does not slow the electrons. So I'm quite confused by all this. I guess perhaps if i switched it to a higher resistance wire the only change would be the number of electrons and not the speed of displacement?
The image I was thinking of is like this
http://www.askaboutireland.ie/learning-zone/primary-students/3rd-+-4th-class/science/electricity/what-is-electricity/ it shows that as one electron comes out from the battery, another comes back inside so I'm not sure about why in the lightning strike the electrons would appear to move from one end to another. My idea is like this:
http://postimg.org/image/3ljzyp61h/full/ so as an electron gets pushed to A an electron is also pushed to B at the same time.
So within this 1 question I found that I don't really understand how electrons flow in conductors.
2)
When doing electrolysis we have an anode and a cathode in the solution. And in the solution if I had either pure water or dilute NaCl(aq) solution, the salt solution would be a better conductor. However, since the H+ ions and the OH- ions would preferencially get oxidized/reduced how does having those addition Na+ and Cl- help with the discharge of H+ and OH- ions?
3)
When i have a lightning, it is because the cloud is negatively charged while the ground is positively charged. So the air is ionized to form plazma (positive ions and negative electrons). Then from here, how does the current flow? Does it displace the negative electrons? But then again the negative electrons would go to the ground right? So I'm a bit confused here.
4)
Again when a lightning strikes water, how does having more ions present make it more conductive? Because I don't really see lightning striking water as a simple electrolysis like in question 2. Or is the part where electrons reach the water the negative electrode and the earth the positive electrode? So its like the same type of reaction going on where H+ and OH- react with the electrodes?
But then in that case, i don't see how being in the water while that happens would kill you. Since now even if there is a current, it's only free mobile ions moving about which is the same thing as putting my hand in a solution of NaCl(aq).
Thanks so much for the help