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Charges of cations/anions & cathodes/anodes

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  • 25-08-2019 12:28am
    #1
    Game of Thrones Fan
    Registered Users Posts: 112 ✭✭


    Doesn't it make things confusing when an anion is negative, but yet an anode is positive? Likewise with a cation and a cathode.

    I always remembered the phrase "cathode negative, anode positive", so because of this I just assumed that the cation would also be positive.


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    #2
    Michael Collins
    Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 1,846 Mod ✭✭✭✭Michael Collins


    Game of Thrones Fan wrote: »
    Doesn't it make things confusing when an anion is negative, but yet an anode is positive? Likewise with a cation and a cathode.

    I always remembered the phrase "cathode negative, anode positive", so because of this I just assumed that the cation would also be positive.

    Good point.

    The etmology of the words anion and cation from Ancient Greek help to explain this.

    anion => 'going up'
    cathion => 'going down'

    The ion part means 'going'.
    The 'an' part means 'up'.
    The 'cath' part means down.

    So you might choose to interpret it like this

    anion => electron count going up => negative ion
    cathion => electron count going down => positive ion

    anode (an-node) => up node or positive node
    cathode (cath-node)= > down node or negative node


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