17. Acid and Base Equilibrium
Bases
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Now, recall that an amine is a covalent compound containing nitrogen and hydrogen, or carbon nitrogen and hydrogen. It doesn't have to be in that order as long as it contains carbon nitrogen and hydrogen in some way. Now we're going to say that amines up to this point, we're gonna take a look at neutral amines and positively charged amines. Here we're going to say that neutral amines represent weak bases. So here we have 3 types of amines within the structure, and if we look at positive amines those with positive charges they represent weak acids. And here we have the positive charge associated with each of these amines. So amines are pretty unique because they can exist as either acids or bases. So it's always important to take a look. Does your amine have a charge of positive? If it does, it's going to be a weak acid. Is it neutral? It'll be a weak base. Now, we've also talked about another type of amine, amide ion, which represents one of the 4 strong basic anions. That's something else entirely, but realize here that yes technically amines can have all three types of situations where they're positive, neutral and negative. But for right now just remember the neutral ones are weak bases, the positively charged ones are weak acids.
