Electrochemical Cells

Today we made a Zinc-Copper cell and measured its voltage. We then put a group of them in series to amplify the voltage - this is called a battery.

There is a convention for how we write a "cell diagram" for this, and we will explore that more next week.

Standard electrode potentials are measured by setting up the hydrogen half-cell as the anode. The redox pair that you want to know the electrode potential for is then set up as the cathode, and the voltage recorded - this is the electrode potential for this particular redox pair.