13.2: Keeping Track of Redox Reactions
- Page ID
- 373535
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There are many important redox reactions, and not all of them can be solved by inspection. For reactions which are more complicated than the simple single replacement reactions introduced in the last section, we need to have ways of keeping track of the movement of electrons. We do this through a process of electron bookkeeping. This process starts with assigning oxidation numbers to each element. Changes in these oxidation numbers are indications of the movement of electrons, and therefore what is oxidized and what is reduced. When balancing a redox reaction, it is important to keep track of the electrons and not just the atoms. Each of these topics will be covered in one of the subsections of this section.