Slide 5

The Brønsted-Lowry Theory

Acid is anything that transfers a proton, and a base is anything that accepts that proton. So as you can
guess these transfers must happen between two substances. Thus we get conjugate acids and conjugate
bases.

Steps to finding a CA and CB of any substance:

Take water H2O the CA (add one H therefore H3O, then deal with the charges we started with a zero
charge on water but for CA’s we add (+) 1 to that: so 0+1=+1 so we get H3O+

Now to find the CB (subtract one H therefore OH, the charge on water is still zero except now instead of
adding a 1 we subtract 1: so 0-1= -1 so we get OH-

These rules apply to any chemical species!

Slide 6 and 7 show the reaction of the production of NH4+ from the non OH- containing reactant NH3

Slide 8

HCl(A)+ NH3(B)>NH4+(CA) and Cl-(CB)

Slide 9

conjugate base conjugate acid

Cl- HCl

NH3 NH4+

C2H300- HC2H3O2

CN– HCN

F- HF
Slide 10

The super six of strong acids! These are the only acids that dissociatateesstenially 100%

What that means is for example HCl out of 100 molecules dissolved in water 100 H+ ions are present
and 100 Cl- are present. See the red bar on the right its almost the same size and the two blue ones on
the right. Barely any original HCL is present.

Note that for H2SO4 only the first H is easily given up, H’s are removed one by one so HSO4- is a weak
acid

EVERY OTHER ACID IS NOT STRONG ONLY THESE SIX ARE STRONG.

Slide 11

The graph shows a higher red bar than the two blue bars. That’s because the acid barely separated in
water the graph on the bottom is an even weaker acid so the blue bars a virtually nonexistent.

So for weak acids and bases use a double arrow to show they are dynamic meaning the keep moving
back and forth between reactants and products. You don’t use a double arrow for strong acids and
bases.

Slide 12

The term ionize is used to acids because they produce ions. This compare strong vs weak acids. HCl
completely turns into it ions where as HF does not.

Slide 13

Why is an acid weak or strong?

It has to do with attraction. The weaker the attraction the stronger the acid

The stronger the attraction the weaker the acid.