Rank the following compounds in order of increasing oxidation state.

The addition of oxygen or any other electronegative element, or the removal of hydrogen or any other electropositive element, is referred to as oxidation in classical or earlier concepts.

We use a set of guidelines to identify the oxidation state of carbon atoms:

• Every link between a carbon atom and another carbon atom has no bearing on oxidation state.
• Each link between a hydrogen atom and a carbon atom reduces the oxidation state by 1.
• The oxidation state goes up by 1 for each link between a carbon atom and an electronegative element.

Atoms other than oxygen, carbon, and hydrogen are absent in these compounds.The most electronegative element is oxygen, whereas the least is hydrogen.The compounds are ranked C D A E B as the oxidation state increases.

Hence, we get C D A E B by ranking the chemicals in order of increasing oxidation state.