The hypochlorite ion, ClO-, acts as a weak base. (b) When ClO- acts as a base, which atom, Cl or O, acts as the proton acceptor? (c) Can you use formal charges to rationalize your answer to part (b)?

Video transcript

Hi everyone for this problem, we're told the bromide ion acts as a weak base, identify which atoms accepts the proton when it acts as a base. Use formal charges to rationalize the answer. Okay, so our goal here is to identify the atom that accepts the proton. And we're working with a weak base and that weak base is the bromine ion. So we're going to need to draw the LewiS structure for this ion to see where the formal charges lie. So let's go ahead and do that. When we draw out the lewiS structure for the bromide ion, we get the following. Okay, so in this bro my eye on the formal charge is on the oxygen. So this oxygen with the negative charge will be the proton except er so we'll go ahead and highlight this and we're able to do this using the formal charge. Okay, so that's the answer to this problem and that's the end of this problem. I hope this was helpful.