Acids, Bases and pH (20)

This suggests that acids release H+ ions and alkalis release OH- ions when dissociated and this combines in a neutralisation to form water. An alkali is just a soluble base.

This is a proton donor

This is a proton acceptor

The best example of this is seeing their dissociation of HCl into H+ and Cl-. The conjugate acid base pair are the HCl and Cl-. This shows two species can be interconverted by the transfer of a proton

This would be the HCl because it’s releasing a proton in the forward reaction to form its conjugate base.

This would be Cl- because it is accepting a proton in the backward reaction to become it’s conjugate acid.

HCl H+ and Cl- HNO3 H+ and NO3- H2SO4 H+ and HSO4- CH3COOH H+ and CH3COO-

When you combine the dissociation of HCl and the neutralisation equation, there are two conjugate acid-base pairs. HCl and Cl- are one pair and OH- and H2O are the other pair. In the forward reaction the HCl is the acid as it releases a proton and the OH- is base as it accepts a proton. In the reverse reaction, the H2O is acid and the Cl- is base.

Normally in an aqueous solution, dissociation is the movement of a proton from an acid to base and doesn’t work unless water is present. But in this case, water is acting as the base and accepting the H+ ion. Here the first conjugate acid base pair is the HCl and Cl- and the second pair is water and the hydronium ion. The hydronium ion is the active ingredient in any aqueous acid so you could write any neutralisation with H3O+ instead of H+.

This refers to the number of hydrogen ions in the acids that will be replaced by a metal ion to form a salt. You can look at the number of hydrogen to get an idea

Monobasic - 1 H+

Monobasic - 1 H+

Dibasic 2 H+

Tribasic 3 H+

It measures the concentration of hydrogen ions. 10^-1 (1) and 10^14 (14) are used to show the 14 pH groups pH less than 7 shows increasing acidity pH of 7 is neutral pH more than 7 shows increasing alkalinity

You can use a pH indicator which will give you the most accurate measure or you can use universal indicator and pH indicator paper and observe the colour. Red is acid and alkali is purple

pH = -log [H+]

[H+] = 10^-pH

There are 10 times more ions and which means there’s a big difference between each pH.

A strong acid will fully dissociate and the concentration of H+ ions is the same as the concentration of the acid. Always round the pH to 2 d.p.

This is the equilibrium constant for the dissociation of an acid. It’s written in the same way as Kc.

pKa = -logKa

Ka = 10^-pKa

The stronger the acid, the larger the Ka values and the smaller the pKa value