Oh, wow, oh, oh, wow, oh, wow, oh, man.

Oh, wow. Hello, you're listening to The Science of Everything podcast episode 37, oxidation and reduction,

and I'm your host, James Fodor.

So, it's been a little while since the last episode.

Sorry about that.

I've been rather busy with my uni subjects, and I actually did five instead of the usual four subjects last semester,

so that meant I had less time

than usual. But fear not, I'm on holidays now, which means more extra time, or a lot of

extra time, for putting our podcast episodes. And today, we're going to be looking at oxidation

and reduction, which is a very important topic in chemistry. Specifically in this episode,

we'll be defining what we mean by oxidation and reduction and talking about how that works, what the concept means, and then basically we will be applying that basic idea to a number of different applications, including combustion, which is a type of redox reduction, or oxidation reduction, rust, batteries, fuel cells, and respiration, all of which

are examples of or significantly involve the concept of oxidation reduction reactions.

And henceforth, I'm going to refer to these as redox reactions, which is just a word that's

taken from reduction and oxidation redox.

It's just a much shorter way of referring to reduction, oxidation, and reactions.

Okay, so let's get started. Oh, I should have said before, pre-requisites for this episode, or recommended pre-listing include episode 23 on chemical reactions, and episode 15 on chemical bonding.

They're the two most important ones that you'll want to have listened to before this one.

First, we'll start with some basic definitions. What do we mean by reduction and oxidation?

A redox reaction very simply is simply any chemical reaction in which atoms have their oxidation state or their oxidation number changed.

And Fear Not will define these terms momentarily.

But a very large portion of all chemical reactions

are redox reactions in one form or another.

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