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Chemistry

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    $\begingroup$ Ever heard about Coulomb's law? Electric forces are really, really strong, about as strong as the strongest thing you can imagine, only stronger. $\endgroup$
    – Ivan Neretin
    Commented Feb 2 at 8:35
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    $\begingroup$ There is a very well established ion separation technique, it is called ion-chromatography. You can "isolate" a given ion of interest from solution. Keep in mind that even in that technique, the charge balance is always maintained. Wikipedia has a nice detailed article. $\endgroup$
    – ACR
    Commented Feb 2 at 14:27
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    $\begingroup$ Applying Coulomb's law, the force necessary to separate $1$ micromole $\ce{Na+}$ from $1$ micromole $\ce{Cl-}$ at a distance of $1$ meter is about $\pu{10^{12}}$ Newton. It is so huge that it cannot be represented by any reasonable way. And it would be even much greater if the separation distance would be smaller. If the separation distance is $1$ micron ($\ce{10^{-6}}$ meter) instead of $1$ meter, Coulomb's law states that this force would be about $\pu{10^{24}}$ Newton. It is not possible to find a reasonable way for describing such a huge force. $\endgroup$
    – Maurice
    Commented Feb 4 at 20:13