Gay-Lussac's law gases and the gaseous products can be expressed in simple whole numbers. For example, Gay-Lussac found that 2 volumes of hydrogen and 1 volume of oxygen would react to form 2 volumes of gaseous water. Based on Gay-Lussac's results, Amedeo Avogadro theorized that, at the same temperature and pressure, equal volumes of gas contain equal numbers of molecules (Avogadro's law). This hypothesis meant that the previously stated result could also be expressed as The law of combining gases was made public by Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac in 1808. Avogadro's hypothesis, however, was not initially accepted by chemists until the Italian chemist
Electrolysis of water reactions predominate in basic (high pH) solutions. Combining either half reaction pair yields the same overall decomposition of water into oxygen and hydrogen: The number of hydrogen molecules produced is thus twice the number of oxygen molecules. Assuming equal temperature and pressure for both gases, the produced hydrogen gas has therefore twice the volume of the produced oxygen gas. The number of electrons pushed through the water is twice the number of generated hydrogen molecules and four times the number of generated oxygen molecules. Decomposition of pure water into hydrogen and oxygen at standard temperature and pressure is not favorable