Electrochemistry, the study of the exchange between electrical and
chemical energy,
has important applications in everyday life stretching from the
battery that
powers your portable radio to the electrorefining that produces the
copper pipes
carrying your drinking water. Those electrochemical processes utilize
oxidation and
reduction reactions. An oxidation involves the loss of one or more
electrons from a
chemical species while a reduction is the gain of one or more electrons by
a chemical
species. When an oxidation and a reduction are paired together in a
redox reaction,
electrons can flow from the oxidized species, the reducing agent or
reductant, to the
reduced species, the oxidizing agent or oxidant. That electron flow
can either be
spontaneously produced by the reaction and converted into electricity, as
in a galvanic
cell, or it can be imposed by an outside source to make a non-spontaneous
reaction
proceed, as in an electrolytic cell. The following SparkNotes on
electrochemistry will review
redox reactions,
galvanic cells,
electrolytic cells, and the
thermodynamics of electrochemistry.
