Electrode Electrode An electrode is an electrical conductor used to make contact with a nonmetallic part of a circuit (e.g. a semiconductor, an electrolyte, a vacuum or air). The word was coined by William Whewell at the request of the scientist Michael Faraday from two Greek words: "elektron", meaning amber (from which the word electricity is derived), and "hodos", a way. The electrophore, invented by Johan Wilcke, was an early version of an electrode used to study static electricity. An electrode in an electrochemical cell is referred to as either an "anode" or a "cathode" (words that were coined by William
Standard electrode potential potentials are independent of the number of electrons transferred —they are expressed in volts, which measure energy per electron transferred—and so the two electrode potentials can be simply combined to give the overall "cell" potential even if different numbers of electrons are involved in the two electrode reactions. For practical measurements, the electrode in question is connected to the positive terminal of the electrometer, while SHE is connected to the negative terminal. The larger the value of the standard reduction potentials, the easier it is for the element to be reduced (accept electrons); in other words, they are better oxidizing