Question

What do oxidation reduction reactions do?

Answer 1

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...