Brensted-Lowry Theory of Acids and Bases We defined an acid as a substance that ionizes in water to produce H* ions, and a base as a substance that ionizes (or dissociates, in the case of an ionic base) in water to produce OH" ions. These definitions are attributed to the Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius. Although the Armhenius acid and Arrhenius base definitions are useful, they are restricted to the behavior of compounds in aqueous solution. More inclusive definitions were proposed by the Danish chemist Johannes Brensted and Thomas Martin Lowry in 1932. According to their theory, an acid is aproton donor and 4 base is a proton acceptor. In this context, the word proton refers to a hydrogen atom that has lost its electron—also known as a hydrogen ion (HY). To describe the behavior of ammonia as a base, which is difficult to do with the Arrhenius theory, we can write; NH + H;0 —* NH,* + OH Base Acid Inthe reaction above, H,O acts as an acid. It gives up a proton, H’, which is taken up by NH, a base. As a resuit of this transfer, the polyatomic ions NH," and OH are formed. If we take the reverse reaction, NH," is an acid and OH is a base NH,* + OH + NH; + H;,0 Acid Base The conventional way to represent a reversible reaction is to use the double arrow notation as shown below, NH; + H,0 == NH,” + OH™ Base(1) Acid(2) — Acid(1)Base(2) An acid and a base that are related to each other (like the pair NHy/NH,* or the pair H,O/ OH) in reaction are referred to as a conjugate pair. Thus, when considering an NH; molecule as a base, an NHz* ion is its conjugate acid. Similarly, in reaction H,O is an acid and OH is its conjugate base. Another example, the ionization of HCI in water;