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Ch.17 - Applications of Aqueous Equilibria

Chapter 17, Problem 38

The strong acid HA is mixed with an equal molar amount of aqueous NaOH. Which of the following pictures represents the equilibrium state of the solution? (Na+ ions and solvent water molecules have been omitted for clarity.)

(A) (B) (C) (D)

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Hello everyone today. We have the following problem. Nitric nitric acid is a strong acid. When an equal amount of potassium hydroxide is added to a nitric acid solution, an acid base reaction takes place, which are the following figures depicts the reaction mixture when the system reaches equilibrium, know that the potassium ions have been omitted for clarity. So, as we said before this, nitric acid is a strong acid, and sodium or potassium hydroxide is a strong base. And so this means that the acid based reaction will proceed to completion. So we're gonna react these two. We're gonna have our nitric oxide nitric acid plus our potassium hydroxide to form potassium nitrate and water. If we remove the potassium ions from this equation, we will get our a nitric acid plus our regular hydroxide ions plus our nitric acid and our water. And so therefore there will only be these nitrate and these water ions in the reaction mixture. Now, one thing that we have to make note is the ionization of that nitrate ion, which is this ion here when it is combined with water, is going to form a reversible reaction to dissociate into hydroxide ions as well as nitrate ions or nitric acid. So we know that nitric acid is a strong acid. And so that must mean that by default this is this nitrate is a weak base. It's the conjugate base and it's weak and it's so weak that when its eye on his eyes with water, there will almost be no product that essentially means that we won't have to worry about fighting nitric acid or hydroxide islands in the solution. And so if you look at these figures here, only option C has only nitrate and water based on its representation. And so with that we have answered the question overall, I hope this helped, and until next time.