Oxidationstate
Oxidation state, or oxidation number, is a formalism used in chemistry to describe the degree of oxidation of an atom within a compound or ion. It serves as a bookkeeping tool to track electron transfer in redox reactions and to balance chemical equations.
Rules for assigning oxidation states include: the elemental form has oxidation state 0; a monoatomic ion has
Examples illustrate the assignments: NaCl has Na +1 and Cl -1; H2O has H +1 and O
Oxidation state is a formal tool rather than a literal map of electron density. It is widely
In practice, oxidation states provide a common framework for comparing redox behavior, though covalency and resonance