Electrolytic cell reaction which would not occur spontaneously otherwise. A galvanic cell can be considered an electrolytic cell acting in reverse. While electrolytic cells convert electrical energy into chemical energy, galvanic cells convert chemical energy into electrical energy. Galvanic cells are often used in batteries. Michael Faraday defined the cathode of a cell as the electrode to which cations (positively charged ions, like silver ions Ag) flow within the cell, to be reduced by reacting with electrons (negatively charged) from that electrode. Likewise he defined the anode as the electrode to which anions (negatively charged ions, like chloride ions Cl) flow within
Reference electrode Reference electrode A reference electrode is an electrode which has a stable and well-known electrode potential. The high stability of the electrode potential is usually reached by employing a redox system with constant (buffered or saturated) concentrations of each participant of the redox reaction. There are many ways reference electrodes are used. The simplest is when the reference electrode is used as a half cell to build an electrochemical cell. This allows the potential of the other half cell to be determined. An accurate and practical method to measure an electrode's potential in isolation (absolute electrode potential) has yet to