News tagged with anode

Anode

An anode is an electrode through which electric current flows into a polarized electrical device. Mnemonic: ACID (Anode Current Into Device). Electrons flow in the opposite direction to the electric current (flow of hypothetical positive charge)

A widespread misconception[citation needed] is that anode polarity is always positive. This is often incorrectly inferred from the correct fact that in all electrochemical devices negatively charged anions move towards the anode (hence their name) and/or positively charged cations move away from it. In fact anode polarity depends on the device type, and sometimes even in which mode it operates, as per the above electric current direction-based universal definition. Consequently, as can be seen from the following examples, in a device which consumes power the anode is positive, and in a device which provides power the anode is negative:

An electrode through which current flows the other way (out of the device) is termed a cathode.

This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA

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