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Learn everything about activity coefficients in electrochemistry with this complete lecture. Understand the concept of activity, activity coefficient, ionic strength, and how it affects electrochemical reactions and calculations. Perfect for CSS aspirants, chemistry students, and anyone studying physical chemistry or electrochemistry. Watch the full lecture for step-by-step explanations, examples, and exam tips.

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Transcript
00:00Hello everyone. Welcome to this exciting lecture series on electrochemistry.
00:07In this video, we are going to dive into an important concept in electrochemistry, which is activity and activity coefficient.
00:20First of all, let us clarify what we mean by the activity.
00:25In simple terms, activity refers to the effective concentration of anion or electrolyte in a solution.
00:32It shows not just how much of the substance is present but how much is actually active or participating in the chemical processes.
00:43It is symbolized by a small a and it gives us more accurate picture than the concentration alone, especially when dealing with real and non-ideal solutions.
00:54Mathematically, activity can be defined using this simple equation.
01:01A will be equal to C multiplied by F.
01:04Here in this equation, C stands for the molar concentration of the solution.
01:09That is what we normally measure in the mole per liter or we can say the molarity.
01:15And F is the activity coefficient which adjusts the concentration to reflect how ions interact in the solution.
01:25We have seen that in an ideal solution where everything behaves perfectly and there is no ion interaction, F is basically equal to 1.
01:35That means the activity just equal to the concentration and A will be equal to C because F has become 1.
01:45But as we move on to the more realistic or concentrated solutions, ions start interacting more.
01:52They repel or retract each other which affect how free they are to participate in the action.
01:58That is when F becomes less than 1 and activity drops below the actual concentration.
02:05So, in some of the realistic solutions, activity coefficient can be less than 1.
02:13We can rearrange the equations like this to define the activity coefficient.
02:19Activity coefficient will be equal to the activity divided by the concentration of the solution.
02:26We can see that the parameter F tells us how much the real solution deviates from the ideal behavior.
02:37If F will be equal to 1, it is ideal.
02:41If F will be less than 1, there is some interference between the ions.
02:47To define the activity coefficient, we can define F the ratio of activity to the actual concentration of the solution.
02:56This concept is extremely useful in advanced electrochemistry, especially when calculating things like the cell potentials,
03:03equilibrium constants, or interpreting results from the titrations.
03:08This concept is also very important when we deal with real-world solutions that are not ideally diluted,
03:18like some in industrial or biological systems where the effective behavior of ions can be very different from what their concentration suggests.
03:28Next, we will see that how we define the activity of an electrolyte.
03:37The activity of electrolyte is defined as the product of the activities of cations and anions.
03:43Rather than considering just a single ion, the activity of the entire electrolyte takes into account both the cations and the anions that make up the compound.
03:55So, activity of the electrolyte if the pressure is entered by the symbol A and it is calculated as the product of the activities of the two ionic components,
04:06which is the positive ion and the negative ion.
04:09Here, A plus is the activity of the positive ion called cation and A negative is the activity of negative ion called cation.
04:18This gives us a more accurate picture of the real behavior of the electrolyte in the solution, especially when we are not dealing with the ideal conditions.
04:27In the same way, we can determine the activity coefficient of the electrolyte.
04:36This, too, is the product of the activity coefficient of both of the ions.
04:42Here, we can see that the activity coefficient or the overall activity coefficient is equal to activity coefficient of cation multiplied by activity coefficient of anions.
04:55In this equation, F plus is the activity coefficient of cation and F minus is the activity coefficient of the anion.
05:06These coefficients, both of these coefficients, reflect how much the behavior of the ions deviate from the reality,
05:13especially in concentrated solutions where interionic interactions are stronger.
05:18For dilute solutions, both F plus and F minus are close to one, which means that the ions act almost ideally.
05:27But as the concentration increases, these coefficients usually drop, indicating the non-ideal behavior in the solution.
05:34So, but the individual activity and the activity coefficient of an ion in an electrolyte cannot be measured directly through experiments.
05:50This is because we cannot isolate a single ion to measure its behavior independently.
05:56In this equation, ions are always existing pairs or groups to maintain the electrical neutrality in the solution.
06:07But we can measure their mean value of the activity and the activity coefficient.
06:13To measure the main activity of the electrolyte, for example, Ax and By, which can be any compound,
06:19these values can be measured by this equation.
06:22Here is the psychometric equation, Ax, By, ionizes into A plus signs and B minus signs.
06:29Here, x and y are the coefficients and y plus and B minus are the charges on these components.
06:38So, here is a simple equation.
06:40To measure the or calculate the activity of the positive and negative winds,
06:45we can use this equation, which is v under root A plus x dot A minus y.
06:51Here, in this equation, v represents the total number of ions present in the solution,
06:56which can be simply obtained by summing up the x and y.
07:02So, that is all for today's lecture.
07:08Thank you very much.
07:11Please leave your seat.
07:12Thank you very much.
07:13Thanks again next week.
07:15See you next week.
07:17Bye-bye.
07:25Bye-bye.
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