Sunday, January 25, 2009

Importance of Faraday's law

The electrical and chemical concepts are interdependent. A flow of electricity through a substance may produce a chemical reaction, and also, a chemical reaction may cause a flow of electricity through some external circuit. The former involves the study of electrolysis and conductance, while the latter, the measurement of electromotive force.
Electrolysis
Faraday's law The quantitative relationship between the amount of electricity passed through a cell and the amount of substances discharged at the electrodes was systematised by Michael Faraday in the form of the following laws:
First law : The amount of substance discharged at an electrode is proportional to the quantity of the electricity passing through the electrolyte.
Second law: When the same quantity of electricity is passed through different solutions, the amount of different substances deposited or dissolved at the electrodes in different electrolytic cells are proportional to their equivalent weights, and in an electrolytic cell, chemically equivalent amounts or substances are discharged at both the electrodes.
The essential content of Faraday's second law is that 1 Faraday, which corresponds to 1 mole of electrons, liberates 1 equivalent of matter. In redox reactions, the amount of the reactant, corresponding in 1 mole of electrons, is thus its equivalent mass.

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