Our Title:
Investigation of the Effect of Reactivity of metals affecting the Redox Reaction of a Voltaic Cell.
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Our Abstract:
Recent innovations have made diesel one of the cleanest and most inexpensive energy options available today. (C.C, 2018) With the advancement of technology, it is important to educate the new-comers of engineering on the knowledge and understanding of power, and how electricity is produced through experiments and findings, which is the reason why this investigative research started. These are devices that use a chemical reaction to create electricity. Moving electrons create electricity, and electrons flow from the anode, the site of oxidation, to the cathode, the site of reduction. For our research, an investigation on how the reactivity of a metal affects the redox reaction of a voltaic cell was done. For the experimental setup, two beakers, two specific sulphate solutions depending on the metal combination, a salt bridge which helps to balance charge, and lets ions move between the two half cells, and two Vernier Voltage Probe to detect the electricity produced (Electrons moving through the wire) were used. 3 different metals were tested, Copper (Cu2+), Zinc (Zn), and Aluminium (Al). (For our experiment, the metal with the higher reactivity series is placed at the cathode, the metal that releases electrons). We measured the voltage produced with the combination of Copper+Zinc, Copper+Aluminium & Zinc+Aluminium, in order to find which combination produces the most voltage. Findings show that the combination of copper+zinc produces the most voltage out of the three pairs, then copper+aluminium, and lastly zinc+aluminium. When the copper+zinc metals were swapped, and Zinc is at the cathode and Copper is at the anode, the reading shows a negative voltage. The findings mean that (according to the comparison between copper+aluminium and zinc+aluminium) the metal with the lower difference in the reactivity series does produce less voltage. The swapped position of Copper+Zinc does support the Standard Reduction Potential of Zinc showing negative voltage at a reading due to a stronger reducing agent. Anomalies include the fact that the combination of copper+zinc produced double the voltage compared to copper+aluminium. The explanation for the anomalie is the fact that there may be a random error that cannot be traced and eliminated, which caused the voltage produced being doubled of what should be less. The random anomalie happens as some of the electrons lost from aluminium (Specifically 3e-) go into the solution, as the metal is in contact with the solution. Since a limitation is keeping the purity of the metal, there might be instances where the impurities in the solution will cause the electrons of the metal will travel into the solution, which causes a reduction of voltage in the wires to be detected by the voltmeter.