What do oxidation reduction reactions do?

1 Answer
anor277
Feb 4, 2018

Well for one, drive the economy....

Explanation:

Our civilization relies on the combustion of fossil fuels....for instance take the hexanes that we put in our motors...

#C_6H_14(l) +19/2O_2(g) rarr 6CO_2(g) + 7H_2O(l) + Delta#

And although this is unusual and not part of the regular syllabus we could assign oxidation numbers to the carbons in hexanes...

#H_3C-CH_2CH_2CH_2CH_2CH_3#...the terminal carbons are #C(-III)#, and the central carbon is #C(-II)#...and all these carbons are oxidized to #C(+IV)#...you could write a redox equation in an electron transfer process...dioxygen, as above, is the species that is reduced...

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