Measurement of electrode potential
Measurement of electrode potential:
The absolute electrode potential of an electrode can not be measured due to the following reasons :
(1) No half cell either oxidation or reduction can take place independently and can work only when both are connected.
(2) The electrone releasing or accepting tendency of an electrode is only relative tendency and not absolute tendency.
Therefore, in order to measure the standard electrode potential of a half call, a reference electrode is required and an arbitrary electrode potential is assigned to it. The commonly used reference electrode is standard hydrogen electrode (SHE) also called normal hydrogen electrode (NHE) and it's standard electrode potential (oxidation or reduction) is taken as zero.