Ritalin is the trade name of a drug, methylphenidate, used to treat attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder in young adults. The chemical structure of methylphenidate is

(a) Is Ritalin an acid or a base? An electrolyte or a nonelectrolyte?

Video transcript

welcome back everyone. We have ibuprofen sold under the brand name Advil. We're told it's an over the counter drug use for relief from pain, fever and inflammation. We need to identify whether ibuprofen is an acid or a base. And as well as whether it's an electrolyte or a non electrolyte and were given the structure for ibuprofen below. So what we want to recognize is a specific group in our molecule here where we have a carbon chain, which we would recall in our group which is bonded to a carbon that is double bonded to an oxygen and then that carbon is also bonded to a alcohol group. And so specifically the group we want to identify is this group here, which we should recall is a car box cilic acid. And so looking at our molecule of ibuprofen, we would recognize that we definitely have a carbon chain bonded to a carbon that is double bonded to an oxygen here where we have that carbon also bonded to a alcohol group. And so because we have here the presence of a carb oxalic acid, we would say that therefore ibuprofen is an acid. Now we want to recall that carb oxalic acids, which we recognize as C 00. H in condensed form are going to specifically be weak assets we recall. And because they're weak acids, we would say that ibuprofen is also specifically a weak acid. And so because we've identified that it's a weak acid, we should recall that that means that therefore it's only going to partially disassociate, sorry, partially disassociate in solution into its ions. And so because it only partially dissociates into its ions, we would say that therefore it's going to be considered a weak electrolyte. And so for our final answers, we would confirm that ibuprofen is not only an acid, but it's also an electrolyte. And so what's highlighted in yellow in our solution are our final answers, acid and electrolyte corresponding to our molecule of ibuprofen. So I hope that everything that I explained was clear. If you have any questions, please leave them down below and I'll see everyone in the next practice video.