General Chemistry - Assign Oxidation Number Interactive Tutorial

Assigning Oxidation Numbers - General Chemistry

Rules for Assigning Oxidation Numbers

Basic Rules

Any atom in its elemental form (Na, O₂, Mg, Cl₂, ...) has and oxidation number of zero.
For monoatomic ions, the oxidation number equals the ion’s charge.
For polyatomic ions the sum of the constituent atoms’ oxidation numbers is equal to the charge of the ion.
For neutral compounds the sum of the constituent atoms’ oxidation numbers is equal to zero.

Specific Rules

Element(s)	Oxidation #	Exceptions
Group I	+1	None
Group II	+2	None
F	-1	None
H (with metals and B)	-1	None
H (with non-metals)	+1	None
O	-2	-1 in peroxides or with F
Halogens	-1	with oxygen or halogens higher in column

Update 2020-11: The Adobe Shockwave is no longer supported but I have received requests to access this interactive tutorial. So now I have made this interative tutorial available as an executable for Windows.

Click here to download the executable. Remember where you download the file to. After it has finished downloading, double-click on the .exe file to run it. It does not require Internet access to run.

Please email me if you need an executable for MacOS.