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Acids and Bases
Acids and Bases
For thousands of years people have known that vinegar, lemon juice and many other foods
taste sour. However, it was not until a few hundred years ago that it was discovered why
these things taste sour - because they are all acids. The term acid, in fact, comes from the
Latin term acere, which means "sour". While there are many slightly different definitions of
acids and bases, in this lesson we will introduce the fundamentals of acid/base chemistry.
In the seventeenth century, the Irish writer and amateur chemist Robert Boyle first labeled
substances as either acids or bases (he called bases alkalies) according to the following
characteristics:
• Acids taste sour, are corrosive to metals, change litmus (a dye extracted from
lichens) red, and become less acidic when mixed with bases.
• Bases feel slippery, change litmus blue, and become less basic when mixed
with acids.
While Boyle and others tried to explain why acids and bases behave the way they do, the first
reasonable definition of acids and bases would not be proposed until 200 years later. Now
there are three concepts of acids and bases in current use; though there are more than three
• Arrhenius concept
• Bronsted-Lowery concept
• Lewis concept
Acids & Bases 3
acid-base concept devised by Svante Arrhenius, which was used to provide a modern
definition of bases that followed from his work with Friedrich Wilhelm Ostwald in
establishing the presence of ions in aqueous solution in 1884, and led to Arrhenius receiving
useful in the study of chemical reactions. However it has the following limitations:
1. Free H+ and OH- ions do not exist in water: The H+ and OH- ions produced by
acids and bases respectively do not exist in the water in the free state. They are
associated with water molecules to form complex ions through hydrogen bonding.
H2O + H+ H3O+
producing H+ and OH- ions in water only. But a truly general concept of acids and
3. Some bases do not contain OH-: Arrhenius base is one that produces OH- ions
in water. Yet there are compounds like NH3, CaO that are bases but contain no OH-
Lowry in 1923. It is based upon the idea of protonation of bases through the de-
protonation of acids—that is, the ability of acids to "donate" hydrogen ions (H+) or protons to
bases, which "accept" them. Unlike the Arrhenius definition, the Bronsted-Lowry definition
does not refer to the formation of salt and water, but instead to the formation of conjugate
acids and conjugate bases, produced by the transfer of a proton from the acid to the base.
The conjugate base is the ion or molecule remaining after the acid has lost a proton, and the
conjugate acid is the species created when the base accepts the proton. The reaction can
proceed in either forward or backward direction; in each case the acid donates a proton to the
base.
For example, the removal of H+ from hydrochloric acid (HCl) produces the chloride ion (Cl−),
HCl → H+ + Cl−
Acids & Bases 5
The addition of H+ to the hydroxide ion (OH−), a base, produces water (H2O), its conjugate
acid:
H+ + OH− → H2O
acids and derivatives such as sulfonates, phosphonates, etc., carboxylic acids, amines, carbon
acids, 1,3-diketones such as acetylacetone, ethyl acetoacetate or Meldrum's acid and many
more.
liquid ammonia have an oxygen or nitrogen atom with a lone pair of electrons that can used
1. Much wider scope: Arrhenius concept of acids and bases is restricted to the study of
embraces all molecules and ions that can donate a proton and those which can accept
a proton.
2. Not limited to aqueous solutions: A Lewis base, defined as an electron-pair donor, can
act as a Bronsted–Lowry base as the pair of electrons can be donated to a proton. This
means that the Bronsted–Lowry concept is not limited to aqueous solutions. Any
AH + S: A- + SH+
Lewis Concept: The Lewis definition of acid-base reactions, devised by Gilbert N. Lewis in
1923 is a further generalization that encompasses the Bronsted-Lowry definition and the
solvent-system definitions. The two theories are distinct but complementary to each other as
a Lewis base is also a Bronsted-Lowry base, but a Lewis acid need not be a Bronsted-
Lewis pictured an acid and base as sharing the electron pair provided by the base. This
creates a covalent bond between the Lewis acid and Lewis base. The resulting combination is
called a complex. If the Lewis acid is denoted by A and the Lewis base by B, then the
For example,
H+ + NH3: → NH4+
1. All the Bronsted-Lowery acid base reactions are covered by the Lewis concept. It is
2. Many reactions which do not involve transfer of a proton are also covered by the