The standard hydrogen electrode is shown below.
As the hydrogen gas flows over the platinum catalyst, an equilibrium is set up between hydrogen molecules and hydrogen ions in solution.
\(2H^+_{(aq)} + 2e^- ⇌ H_{2 (g)} \)
This is the equilibrium that all other systems are compared with.
Standard conditions
Because the position of equlibrium is affected by certain conditions, these must also be standardised so that a fair comparison can be made.
The standard conditions are a temperature of 298K (25°C), a gas pressure of 100 kPa (1 bar or 1 atmosphere) and ionic concentration in solution of 1 mol dm
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