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Ch.16 - Aqueous Equilibria: Acids & Bases

Chapter 16, Problem 39c

The following pictures represent aqueous solutions of three acids HA1A = X, Y, or Z2; water molecules have been omitted for clarity.

(c) Which acid, if any, is a strong acid?

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welcome back everyone. The three different acids are represented by the following image. Note that the water molecules have been removed from the images to improve clarity, identified the strongest acid. So we want to recognize this key that were given where H. A. Represents our strong acid. H 30. Plus represented by this red center atom surrounded by three gray atoms represents hydro ni. Um And then a single blue atom represents our conjugate base a minus. So we need to find the strongest acid. And we're going to want to recall that the strongest acid is going to correlate to being a strong electrolyte and recall that strong electrolytes undergo full dissociation. So when our assets are dissolved in water, we would fully observe the acids become two ions. So looking at our different images here, focusing on H. X. We see that we have a combination of two moles of hydro ni. Um So let's note that down two moles of hydro ni. Um We have moles of conjugate base and two moles of strong acid because we have two moles of strong acid. So two moles of H. A. We can say that H. X. Does not completely dissociate. And so we would not consider H. X as the strongest acid. Moving on to acid H. Y. We can see that we have a total of two moles of hi sorry, two moles of hydro ni um here and then counting Strong acid molecules. We have a total of 123456 moles of our strong acid because we have six moles of our strong acid. We can say that acid H. Y. Does not also dissociate fully. So now moving on to acid HZ, we can count a total of formals of hydro ni um and four moles of the conjugate base. Because we do have no more of our HZ strong acid molecules depicted in this image here, and only the presence of our hydro knee um molecules and our conjugate based molecules. We can confirm that acid HZ is fully dissociated and that's because we have zero moles of our strong assets. So we have none only hydro ni. Um and conjugate based. Present. And so due to these facts, we can confirm that acid H. C. Is going to be the strongest acid because it went it underwent full dissociation being a strong electrolyte. So, HZ is our final answer corresponding to choice C. In the multiple choice, I hope that everything I reviewed was clear. If you have any questions, please leave them down below. And I'll see everyone in the next video