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why mercury electrodes are not used in dihydrogen preparation?

why mercury electrodes are not used in dihydrogen preparation?
 

Grade:12th pass

2 Answers

Arun
25750 Points
4 years ago
You may have only read from books and learnt about Standard Hydrogen Electrode (SHE). If you had used it in your experiments, you would immediately realize that it i it is so cumbersome to handle it. Then you would think how nice it would be if there was a simpler and more convenient reference electrode and your search would lead you to reference electrodes such as calomel electrode, Ag/AgCl electrode etc.

In fact this is how they were discovered - in a search for a simple, reliable and easy to handle reference electrode.

Therefore, the answer is: easy reliable and simple to handle make calomel electrode, Ag/AgCl electrodes more commonly used compared to SHE.
Vikas TU
14149 Points
4 years ago
Dear student 
Metals like Copper , Mercury and silver are less electropositve than hydrogen , Because it lies below in the electrochemical series , so, they do not liberate Hydrogen from Acid.
Hope this helps 

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