battery effect, corroson, anyone ACTUALLY seen it ?

Ben
you are making a hash out of the terminology
do read this thread
http://forum.oc-forums.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=154570

be cool

Im picking up on a previous idea in this thread: sacrificial anode.
Yes, you are right, boats do use Mg sacrificial anodes (usually). A Mg strip should do the job when used to save Al also. Mg will want to give up its 2 e and will corrode before Al (which is AFTER Mg on the periodic table).
Any metal set BEFORE Al in the periodic table will sacrifice nicely for Al.
So all you have to do is put a Mg wire (etc) somewhere in the water container and change innow and then when it gets badly eaten away by corrosion.

Happy?

One more thing, metal corrosion is basically galvanic corrosion. Corrosion is all the same when it comes to metals: O2 will form oxides with the metal (FeII or FeIII oxides, Al oxides, Mg oxides, ect) and these oxides will kinda gnaw into the previously fresh metal and deposit on it. This deposit is very brittle and the integrity of the metal is compromised (you get hole eventually).
This process is accelreated in salt solutions (and I mean any ions in the water). Cl is a known accelerator of this proccess.

This is for those of you who didnt know much about corrosion. The rest, (those who know) please dont think im trying to teach you anything (smiling).

Hope it helps

PS: holy smokes, just read the article posted by BillA above, it sais basically what i just said, sorry for repeating it.

Well now see, I thought they were seperate and distinct

My intire system is made using copper only and plastic hoses,
does this mean I am totally safe ?
or is at a good idea to connect all cooling blocks with a wire to GND, so they all have same zero potential, then no current can flow in the water,

well, if you have 2 different kind of metals there are 2 kinds of corrosion going on.

1. from the more EN metal to the less EN one (the earliest on the periodic table will be the anode and get corroded....generally).
2. from O2 in solution/air to mostly any metal (the earlier the metal is on the periodic table, the more it will corrode...most of the times)

so if you only have one kind of metal, then you are only susceptible to the second kind of corrosion.

hope this helps

Wouldn't a simple corrosion inhibitor solve this problem?

sure, if you paint your block with some corrosion inhibiting paint you will be worries free for a while.

here, got a cam.
these were each uesd for less than a week.