GENERAL CHEMISTRY 2

ACIDS, BASES, PH AND POH

MELC’s
Introduction We have probably heard the term acid and base but what do these mean on the molecular
with level. Let’s discuss the rigid definition according to a few different models.
preliminaries
A pleasant day to everyone, get yourselves ready. Pick up a pen, paper and your book in
General Chemistry 2.

You are with Teacher Kaye Lim and welcome to my class where everything’s KAYE OK in
KAYE’S VIRTUAL CLASSROOM.
Review of Past Before we proceed to our new lesson, let us have some recap of our previous discussion.
Lesson
What are the stresses that can affect chemical equilibrium? Kindly comment down your
answers?

State the le chatelier’s principle.

Very good. It looks like we are all ready for our next discussion.
Lesson Proper Most often when we talk about acids and bases we are referring to the bronsted-lowry
with definition. According to this model an acid is something that donates a proton and a base is
Application something that accepts a proton. An H+ ion is a proton because if a hydrogen atom loses an
electron all that is left is the proton that comprises the nucleus.

Proton transfer is a big part of chemistry. An acid and base will react to form a conjugate acid-
base pair. The thing that gives up a proton is the acid the thing that accepts it is the base. And
on the product side the base has become the conjugate acid and the acid has become the
conjugate base because the thing that gained the proton could potentially lose it again acting as
an acid and the thing the lost the proton might gain it back acting as a base, the bronsted-lowry
definition only applies to protic species or molecules with hydrogen atoms that can be lost as
protons, but there are aprotic species that also display acidity and basicity.

This is what the Lewis definition entails. Under the lewis definition a base is something that
donates a pair of electrons and an acid is something that accepts electrons. A Lewis base is
indistinguishable from a bronsted-lowry base but the acids differ in the sense that a bronsted-
lowry acid must have at least one hydrogen atom. A lewis acid just needs some partially
positive atom, a species that can act as both a bronsted-lowry acid, and base is said to be
amphoteric. Water is amphoteric because it can behave as an acid losing a proton to become
hydroxide or it can act as a base gaining a proton to become a hydronium ion.

In a sample of water, a tiny fraction of molecules transfers a proton from one to another which
we call an acid-base reaction. This is an equilibrium and it’s shown here. we can write an
equilibrium expression by showing the concentrations of the products over the concentrations
of the reactants. We will only include gases and aqueous substances so here it will look like
this. At room temperature this equals 1x1014 or one in one hundred trillion, that’s the fraction
of water molecules that are ionized at any moment. As temperature increases Kw increases.
Hydrogen-ion concentration which is essentially proton concentration, if above one times ten
to the negative seven gives an acidic solution, if below its basic, if equal its neutral.

When looking at conjugate acid-base pairs we must understand that a strong acid is something
that will readily lose a proton. If something is a strong acid it means its conjugate base is very
 stable, that’s why it’s so willing to lose a proton, a strong acid will have a weak conjugate base
since the conjugate base will be very stable, meaning it isn’t dying to pick up a proton. A weak
acid something that isn’t very willing to lose a proton, will have strong conjugate base,
something that will very easily gain a proton, so if the strength of an acid is proportional to the
stability of the conjugate base we have to be able to predict the stability of conjugate bases in
order to tell how strong an acid will be.

Whichever atom is losing a proton the larger it is the more stable the conjugate base will be
comparing the acids made by combining a hydrogen with a halogen we can see that HI is the
strongest this is because when the proton leaves we are left with an iodide ion, this is much
larger than a fluoride ion and therefore can diffuse the negative charge around a greater
volume thereby stabilizing itself. Fluoride is much smaller with a very localized charge and is
therefore less stable so hydrofluoric acid is a much weaker acid. Also the more electronegative
an atom is the better it is at accommodating a negative charge so an oxygen atom can more
readily lose a proton than a carbon atom which is why something like water is far more acidic
than say methane.

Acids are also stronger when their conjugate bases are resonance stabilized a carboxylic acid
is about a trillion times stronger acid than water even though both of them leave an oxyanion
after deprotonating. This is because the conjugate base of the carboxylic acid can share the
burden of the negative charge between two oxygen atoms by resonance while hydroxide can’t.
these resonance structures don’t actually exist but rather the composite resonance structure
does which shows delocalized pi electron density distributed about this portion of the
molecule. More on this in organic chemistry.

There can be monoprotic acids which can only lose one proton, or polyprotic acids, which can
lose several, polyprotic acids become less acidic with each deprotonation. In an acid-base
equilibrium the side with the weaker acid-base pair will always be favored. This is because the
stronger acid or base will have a greater tendency to react and generate the weaker species.
We can tell acid strength by looking at an acid’s pKa. The lower the pKa the stronger the acid.
Strong acids deprotonate completely, transferring every acidic proton to molecules of solvent
or other things in solution.

Weak acids only deprotonate partially, generating some of the conjugate acid but won’t react,
the hydronium ion concentration measures the degree to which an acid transfer protons to
water molecules and therefore the strength of the acid, but hydronium concentrations have
inconvenient exponents which can be cumbersome to list so we have developed a more
convenient way to describe acidity, the pH of a solution is the negative log of the hydronium
concentration.

Logarithms are the inverse operations of exponents so the reason why a negative log is useful,
here it takes an annoying number like 10 to the negative seven and it turns it into seven which
is much tidier so a solution with a pH of seven has a hydronium concentration that is
considered neutral. We can also measure the basicity of a solution by calculating the pOH.

This is because a strong base will generate hydroxide ions in aqueous solution by stealing
protons from water molecules. Just like pH, pOH is the negative log of the hydroxide
concentration. Another way to calculate pH and pOH is by using the formula for Kw. From
this we see that pH + pOH must equal to 14. Between these relationships we can relate ph,
poh, hydronium concentration and hydroxide concentration and we should be able to get from
one to any of the others using this chart.
Guided Let’s check comprehension.
activity 1. For the reaction, identify the acid, base, conjugate acid, and conjugate base.
NH3 + H2O ↔ NH4+ + HO-
Base acid conjugate acid conjugate base

2. A sodium hydroxide solution has [HO-] = 3.50x10-3M. what is its pH?

pOH = -log[HO-] = -log(3.50 x 10-3) = 2.46
pH + pOH = 14
pH = 14 – 2.46 = 11.54
Generalization For us to easily remember the formula in solving ph, poh concentration of ph and
concentration of poh, let’s take a look on the given chart.

Evaluation To check your understanding, open your book on pages 182-183 and answer numbers 1 and 2.
You will be given 15 minutes to accomplish the task.

1. Identify the conjugate acid and conjugate base in each of

the following pairs.
Conjugate acid Conjugate base Conjugate base Conjugate acid
H2SO4 SO4-2
H2PO4-1 Br1
HCH3COO PO4-3
H2CO3 HCO3-1

2. The ph of normal rain water is 5.80. what will be the ph of

rainwater that falls near a coal-burning power plant if its
[H+] is 5.98 x 10-4M? compare the ph values of the normal
rainwater and the rainwater that falls near a coal-burning
power plant.

Were you able to answer it correctly?

Very good. Keep up the good work!
Assignment Now for your assignment, answer number 3 – 5 on page 183 of your book.
I hope you enjoyed our lesson and understood the key concepts in acids, bases, ph and poh.
Once again, I’m Teacher Kaye Lim where everything’s KAYE OK in KAYE’S VIRTUAL
CLASSROOM.

Prepared by:

PRINCESS KAYE M. LIM

Teacher II