Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Can i use zinc electrodes in the water splitting experiment instead of nickel?

You "can" use any conductive metal as an electrode; however, you need to consider whether it will be involved in a chemical reaction or not. Nickel is doesn't oxidize as quickly as zinc does. This makes nickel a better choice for electrodes than zinc for these kinds of experiments. Does it matter to your experiment? That probably depends on how long the experiment has to run and how fast the zinc oxidizes in the experiment and how easy it is to clean the electrodes between runs.

If you tell us just which experiment you are doing we might be able to give you a more specific answer.