Can i find out if a substance is acid, base, or neutral without litmus paper?
ChemistrytutorSite.com-Homework Chemistry Help
Can i find out if a substance is acid, base, or neutral without litmus paper?
ChemistrytutorSite.com-Homework Chemistry Answer
How to predict that a substance is acid, base, or neutral without using any indicator? the answer is you should examine the component that form the substance, check what is the cation and what is the anion of the substance, is the substance contains H+ or OH- or, what kind of base and acid that build the substance and the value of Ka and Kb will be necessary to consider too.
here i will be give you the examples:
1. does the substance have H+ or OH-?
substance that has H+ will be acid and that has OH- will be basic. thus:
H2SO4, HCl, H3PO4 are acids and NaOH, Ca(OH)2 and KOH are bases.
2. if the substance is a salt
salt that build from strong acid and strong base will be neutral in their solution, example NaCl will be neutral because it forms from stong acids HCl and NaOH. another example are NaNO3, K2SO4
Salt that build from strong acid and weak base will be acid and the reverse salt from weak acid and strong base will be basic.
example:
NH4Cl is acid in their solution
CH3COOK is basic in their solution
How about if the salt builds from weak acid and weak base? You should take a look for the Ka and Kb values, the greater one has to determine the properties of the salt.
Add comment December 2nd, 2008