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Chemistry Articles

Electrochemical Series

The electrochemical series or the activity series is the arrangement of various electrodes in the increasing order of their standard reduction potential. The reduction potential values are seen to increase from negative to zero and positive real numbers. When arranged linearly, it would look like a number line with the positive numbers on the right side of zero and the negative numbers on the left side of zero.

What is an Electrode Potential?

An electrode when in contact with an electrolyte solution of the similar ionic nature (Example, Cu electrode in CuSO4 solution, Zn electrode in ZnSO4 solution) tends to either undergo Oxidation (loss of electrons) or reduction (gain of electrons).

Due to this oxidation or reduction, there develops a charge separation between the metal electrode and its ions in the solution creating a potential difference.

What is Degree/Level of Unsaturation (LU) or Double Bond Equivalent (DBE)? How to find and interpret DBE values?

Pre-requisite Reading: Identifying single bond, double bond, triple bond, saturation, and unsaturation. 

The DBE calculation uses the general molecular formula to find the presence of unsaturation in a compound. The unsaturation is calculated in levels or degrees. The lowest degree of unsaturation (DOU) indicates minimum unsaturation; there is the least loss of hydrogens to form pie bonds or cyclic rings like in cycloalkanes.

What are s-block elements?

If all the elements were to create a gated community for themselves; they would build four apartment blocks namely, the s-block, p-block, d-block and the f-block. The elements having similar property would be grouped together occupying one block and this behavior is based on the orbital the last electron chooses to enter.

Types of Equivalent Hydrogens (structurally and chemically similar)

The Hydrogens attached to a Carbon atom are said to be equivalent if they are in a same chemical environment. Same chemical environment means that under a reaction condition, these hydrogens would lose their identities of being attached to separate Carbons and behave like an identical set. 

Identifying such hydrogen types would help in predicting the number of monohalogen products that could be obtained on free radical halogenation reaction