Applications of Electrolysis

• Most metals are found in Earth’s crust as metal oxides.
• Converting them to pure metals requires the reduction of the metal, a nonspontaneous process.
• Electrolysis can be used to produce these metals.
• Electrolysis can also be used to plate metals onto other metals.
• Silver can be plated onto another, less expensive metal using an electrolytic cell.
• A silver electrode is placed in a solution containing silver ions.

An electrical current causes the following:

• Oxidation of silver at the anode (replenishing the silver ions in solution).
• Reduction of silver ions at the cathode (coating the ordinary metal with solid silver).