The oxidation number of carbon in ` CH_2O` is.

Explanation

To find the oxidation number of carbon in the compound CH₂O (formaldehyde), we can follow these steps:

### Step 1: Assign known oxidation states
- The oxidation state of hydrogen (H) is +1.
- The oxidation state of oxygen (O) is -2.

### Step 2: Set up the equation
Let the oxidation number of carbon (C) be \( x \). The overall charge of the molecule is neutral (0). Therefore, we can write the equation based on the sum of the oxidation states:
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