Gerald Pollack That is the highly controversial claim made by Kate Ovchinnikova and Gerald Pollack in Langmuir earlier this year.[Langmuir] Electroneutrality is a guiding principal in electrochemistry and is a method to understanding electrolytic cells (Pt electrodes in dilute aqueous NaCl solutions). It stipulates that any charge imbalance across an electrochemical system is quickly (~ns) balanced by the salt present in the water being driven by the electric field in such a way to neutralize that charge imbalance. Thus the need for salt bridges and all that wonderful G-chem stuff we have learned. There is even a cool little applet you can play with electroneutrality by the Harvey Project. When I tried to sit down with electrochemists to discuss the claims by O&P they quickly dismissed them out of hand after reading the beginning of their paper. So the big question is, did O&P stumble across something amazing or did they spectacularly overstate the results of their experiment. I can summarize their paper succinctly: Insert electrodes into electrolytic cell Turn on power supply Disconnect the electrodes from the circuit Remove the bridge between beakers Reconnect electrodes to measure residual charge in the two beakers. The design seems thoughtful enough, but before I get into the merits of their results I need to take time to mention a few gems in their paper. Here is a quote from them. Bubble formation occurred in all experiments (n > 20), although position and...