Are we technically reducing electrodes/wires for the instant that an electron passes through them? In lecture I was taught that, in a galvanic cell at standard conditions, platinum is often used as an inert electrode when the species being oxidized or reduced exists only in solution, because platinum is &quot;inert,&quot; which means it is very stable at its oxidation state and resists reduction or oxidation. This concept confuses me, because &quot;Reduction&quot; means to lose charge, a.k.a. gain an electron(s). When the electrode has an electron passing through it in order to be transferred to another material, isn't it being reduced, albeit for a very miniscule amount of time?
For example, consider a galvanic cell with platinum electrodes and an iron wire. If we were to examine the cell at an instant and examine the platinum electrodes/wire, we would see a charge of -1 on some of the platinum atoms and iron wire, correct?
What I'd like to imagine is that, while platinum is capable of having a negative charge because of the room for electrons in its d-block, the species being reduced in the half-cell will always have a higher affinity for accepting the electron due to its higher standard reduction potential. This still leaves me confused on why platinum is willing to accept the electron and thus making platinum a medium for electron transfer in the first place, though. This all applies to the iron wire (or any other element that may be used for electron transfer) as well, but I would like to tackle the case of platinum overall.
Reduction and oxidation are defined as gaining and donating electrons from the valence shell of an atom respectively.
Whereas in the case of electrons flowing in the electrodes and connecting wires the electrons are passing from the interatomic voids and not being released by the wires and the electrode.
(There will be some electrons which will interact with the conductor's atoms but what will happen is that they will get deflected. There will be a slim chance that a few electrons will replace an electron from the conductor's electron cloud but that doesn't change the situation as both the electrons are same in a classical sense. )
If your claim was true than the anode would have got some extra negative charge and the cathode extra positive which would have driven up the voltage higher than that expected from the cell alone.
In a similar way when we connect a wire it doesn't magically change the measured voltage.
Even when we perfom the same experiment with different inert electrodes and different kinds of wires the measured reading doesn't change much. (There are some changes in current flowing through the circuit due to the difference in resistances of different materials)