A voltaic cell that uses a salt bridge to complete the elect

A voltaic cell that uses a salt bridge to complete the electrical circuit.

Solution

ANSWER

If you place a solid zinc electrode into a beaker filled with a solution of zinc ions and a sold copper electrode into a seperate beaker full of copper ions, you begin to have the makings of a cell. Here, the copper electrode will be the cathode, and the zinc theanode. If you connect the two electrodes with a wire, you have an external circuit you can draw power from. You also need a salt bridge, a way for charge balance between the two beakers to be maintained: this is typically a glass tube filled with a KCl solution and stoppered on both ends with a permeable plug. When charge flows into one beaker (The copper beaker gains electrons, the zinc one loses them) ions in the salt bridge migrate from one beaker to the other to keep both solutions electrically neutral

Such a cell is often abbreviated as follows:

In the above cell, we can trace the movement of charge.

Example: In the cell below, what are the two half reactions and what occurs at the anode and the cathode?

Solution: The left hand side is the anode, the right is the cathode.