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Ch.18 - Chemistry of the Environment

Chapter 18, Problem 31b

(b) If a limestone sculp- ture were treated to form a surface layer of calcium sul- fate, would this help to slow down the effects of acid rain? Explain.

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Hi everyone for this problem. It reads a limestone sculpture was treated with a calcium oxalate coating to avoid the effect of acid rain. How will the calcium oxalate coding prevent the damage caused by acid rain and were given four answer choices. Okay so we know here that we are dealing with acid rain and we want to answer the question of how will the coding prevent damage caused by acid rain. So let's go ahead and first start off with what is acid rain. Okay, so we have acid rain and acid rain is predominantly made out of sulfuric acid. Okay, so H. Two S. 04 and at neutral ph and that is at ph of seven are salty ability tells us that calcium carbonate is more soluble than calcium oxalate. So we're comparing these two in terms of soluble itty. Okay so go ahead here, it's more soluble. Okay so in terms of P. H. The we need to see how is ph dependent here when it comes to soluble it. E So because the calcium, the calcium carbonate is more soluble than the calcium oxalate, the soluble bility of our calcium carbonate increases with decreasing ph Okay so let's go ahead and write that out. So we have our solly ability increases with decreasing P. H. And so what that means is the soluble itty of our our calcium oxalate is not ph dependent. Okay and so that means it's going to be less reactive and acidic solution and because it's less reactive and acidic solution it's going to need a stronger acidic solution to shift its equilibrium. So with that we've gathered that the saw the ability of calcium oxalate is not ph dependent and it's going to need more a stronger acid solution to shift the equilibrium. So out of our answer choices given we see that answer choice A goes with that statement of our findings. Okay, so we'll go ahead and highlight answer choice A. The soluble itty of calcium oxalate is not pH dependent, hence it is more resistant to degradation, degradation caused by acid rain. Okay, so that's it for this problem. I hope this was helpful.
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