Faraday law, oxidation numbers, and ionic conductivity

What is it about?

The Faraday laws of electrolysis state that the charge transported by a solvated ion between two electrodes is an integer multiple of the elementary charge e. Why this happens is far from obvious, because liquids are not assemblies of ions: they are assemblies of atoms, having ionic character only because the neighboring atoms have different ionicity. There is no way of extracting integer charges from a "snapshot" of the electronic charge distribution at a given time. Instead, integer charges manifest themselves only when the nuclei are adiabatically transported over macroscopic distances.

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Why is it important?

It addresses some very basic concepts in chemical physics from a novel viewpoint.