Oxidizing and Reducing Agent Tendencies

							











Oxidizing and Reducing Agent Tendencies:- the electrochemical series helps us to pick out substances that are god oxidizing agents and those which are good reducing agents. For example, a very high negative reduction potential of lithium electrode indicates that it is very difficult to reduce Li+ ions to Li atoms. Therefore, Li+ cannot accept electrons easily from other species. In other words, it can readily lose electrons and therefore, behaves as strong reducing agent. As the reduction potential increases the tendency of the electrode to behave as reducing agent decreases. Thus, all the substances appearing at the top of the series behave as good reducing gents. For Example Li, K are the best reducing gents while F- and Au are the poorest reducing agents.
Similarly, the substances at the bottom of the table have high reduction potentials and they can be easily reduces. For example, fluorine has the highest electrode potential indicating that fluorine is very powerful oxidizing agent or fluoride is very poor reducing agent. Therefore, they act as strong oxidizing agents. From the position of the electrodes in the table we can conclude that H+: Fe is a better oxidizing agent than Cl2 and so on. Thus, good oxidizing agents are the substances appearing at the bottom of the table.