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Ch.16 - Acid-Base Equilibria

Chapter 16, Problem 88e

Predict the stronger acid in each pair: (e) benzoic acid (C6H5COOH) or phenol (C6H5OH).

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Hi everyone for this problem, it reads which acid is stronger method OIC acid or methanol. So we have two acids here and for us to determine which one is stronger. Let's go ahead and start off by drawing them out. Okay, so for a method OIC acid we have the following and for methanol we have the following. So let's take a look at our O. H. Here. So when these lose a proton, it's going to form a conjugate base. And we want to see how our our conjugate bases stabilized. And so from our method OIC acid, we see that it is resident stabilized because we have a pi bond here. Okay, However, on the other hand, for a methanol there is no pi bonds. So it is not resident stabilized or its conjugate base will not be resident stabilized when it does lose that proton. And so methanol acid is going to favor the formation of its conjugate base because of that residents stability. And so that makes it the stronger acid than methanol. So let's go ahead and highlight that here. So our method OIC acid is going to be the stronger acid because of resonant stability. Okay, so that's it for this problem. I hope this was helpful