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Oxidation Numbers: Oxidation Numbers Are Made-Up or Hypothetical Numbers Assigned To Each Atom

Oxidation numbers are hypothetical numbers assigned to atoms in a reaction to represent the number of electrons available for shuffling. Reactions can proceed with or without electron exchange, which is reflected in the difference of oxidation numbers on each side and defines if it is a redox reaction. There are rules for assigning oxidation numbers, such as elements in their natural state have an oxidation number of zero, and the oxidation numbers of all atoms in a molecule must add up to the overall charge of the molecule.

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Yuvraj Singh
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66 views

Oxidation Numbers: Oxidation Numbers Are Made-Up or Hypothetical Numbers Assigned To Each Atom

Oxidation numbers are hypothetical numbers assigned to atoms in a reaction to represent the number of electrons available for shuffling. Reactions can proceed with or without electron exchange, which is reflected in the difference of oxidation numbers on each side and defines if it is a redox reaction. There are rules for assigning oxidation numbers, such as elements in their natural state have an oxidation number of zero, and the oxidation numbers of all atoms in a molecule must add up to the overall charge of the molecule.

Uploaded by

Yuvraj Singh
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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OXIDATION NUMBERS

Oxidation numbers are made-up or hypothetical numbers assigned to each atom

in a reaction, individual or within a molecule. They represent, loosely, the number

of electrons available for shuffling around during the course of a reaction.

Reactions can proceed with or without the exchange of electrons. If electrons are

exchanged, that will be reflected in the difference in oxidation number of atoms on

the right and left side of the chemical equation, and the reaction is called

a redox (reduction-oxidation) reaction.

There are agreed-upon rules for assigning oxidation numbers. I'll go through them

here, but they're recapped in the table below. You can click on the table to

download a .pdf copy of it.

The rules

1.Atoms in elemental form have an oxidation number of zero. For example,

Mg, H2, Ar and Fe(s) are all examples of atoms in their elemental states. In

the case of Mg, if no charge and no state are shown, we have to assume it's

metallic Mg. Hydrogen exists as a diatomic gas in its elemental form.


2.Group 1A and 2A elements have the same oxidation number that the ion of

the metal would, unless it's in its elemental form.

3.Hydrogen almost always has an oxidation number of +1. A rarely-

encountered exception is when H is bound to a metal in

a hydride compound.

4.Oxygen almost always has an oxidation number of -2. In rare exceptions,

when oxygen is in a peroxide (O2-, like H2O2), its oxidation number is -1.

5.Fluorine always has a -1 oxidation number, and Cl, Br and I almost always

do.

6.This may be the most important rule: The oxidation numbers of a molecule

have to add up to the total charges on the molecule. If the molecule is

neutral, that's zero. For example, the sums of the oxidation numbers

of CO2 and CO32- are0 and -2, respectively.


You've noticed that some oxidation numbers are fixed, and others can vary

(otherwise we wouldn't have redox reactions). It turns out that the oxidation

numbers of some atoms can vary quite a lot.

The chart below should help you to visualize the possible oxidation numbers that

can occur for the first 39 atoms. If you're working out the oxidation states of the

atoms in a reaction and you get one that's not on this chart, it's probably worth

checking your work. You can download the chart and the table above by clicking

on either.
Below you'll find a few examples of how we use oxidation numbers to make some

judgments about chemical reactions.

The general approach is to assign oxidation numbers to each atom (remember, its

each atom, not molecule), then compare the oxidation number of any given atom

on both the left and right sides of the reaction. If the oxidation state (number) of

the atom increases, that atom is oxidized (loses electrons). If the oxidation state

decreases from left to right, that atom is reduced.

If the oxidation number of an atom increases from left to right in a reaction, the

atom is oxidized in the process. If it decreases, the atom is reduced.

Source: http://www.drcruzan.com/OxidationNumbers.html

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