Name: Vine Ortega

BSMLS - 1

Define the following terms. Elaborate.

1. Acids and bases

In chemistry, acids have long been recognized as a distinct class of compounds whose
aqueous solutions exhibits the characteristics of having sour taste, reacts with bases to form a
salt and water, changes the color of litmus from blue to red, and reacts with certain metals to
produce gaseous H2. Acidic solutions are known to have pH less than 7, meaning the lower the
pH level of a solution, the acidic it is. Chemistry came up with three common definitions for acid;
first is the Arrhenius acid which defines as any substances that increases the concentration of
hydronium ions (H3O+) in solution, second is the Brønsted-Lowry acid and stated as any
substance that can act as a proton donor and lastly is the Lewis acid that means any substance
that can accept a pair of electrons. The strength of an acid refers to how readily an acid loses a
proton or gives it, often in a solution. A stronger acid ionizes more eagerly than a weaker acid,
or dissociates in a certain solution.
On the other hand, a base by definition is a substance that interacts with hydrogen ions
and can neutralize the acid. In other words, it is the opposite of the acid. Mostly of the bases are
minerals which form water and salts by reacting with acids which includes metal oxides,
hydroxides, and carbonates. Like the acid, base also have three common definitions; the
Arrhenius base which states that any compound that donates hydroxide ion (OH–) in solution,
second is the Brønsted-Lowry base that indicates any compound capable of accepting a proton
and third is Lewis base that means any compound capable of donating an electron pair. A
strong base is the conversion of a strong acid. An acid can be considered strong if it can easily
contribute protons while a base is considered strong if it can easily deprotonate from other
compounds.

2. Water as Acid and base

Water is a special molecule with many peculiar properties that make it important to
Earth's existence. In reality, when scientists on other planets look for life, they look for signs of
water first. In chemistry, water is composed of two hydrogen atoms bound to an atom of oxygen.
By sharing electrons they form those bonds. The most common acid on earth is water and at
the same time the most common base. Bronsted and Lowry defined them but they didn't classify
them by how they acted or what they tasted like or even what they were made of, they defined
them. This became an impressive achievement to science because a huge class of molecules
and to some extent or another, act as acids and bases. They both defined an acid as being
anything that donates a proton and a base as being anything that accepts a proton. And when
proton mentioned, what we're talking about here is a hydrogen atom without its electron. Usually
this is happening in water where acids and bases can react in gas, but almost always they're in
an aqueous solution, and when a proton gets donated in water, it is accepted by water.
3. pH scale
The pH is a measure of the acid / basic water content. The scale is between 0-14, with 7
being neutral. PHs below 7 indicate acidity while pHs above 7 indicate a base. PH is really a
relative measure of free hydrogen and hydroxyl ions in the water. Chemically, pH represents the
power of hydrogen in a solution, it's mathematically defined as: "the negative of the base 10
logarithm of the concentration of hydrogen ions in solution." This means that at any given
moment, there will be a certain number of hydrogen ions in solution -- a very small number --the
concentration will be a number like one times 10 to the negative fifty moles per liter. That
negative 5, is your base 10 logarithm. We take the negative of that, and you get the pH 5.

4. Salts and hydrolysis

 Salt is a material which is essential to the human body. Made from acid and base, salt
can react with water and create solutions that are acidic, basic, or neutral. Basically, salt
hydrolysis is a reaction in which one of the salt ions reacts with water, producing either an acidic
or basic solution. On the other hand, hydrolysis is the chemical breakdown of compounds by
water, which relies on the compound's capacity for heat, solubility, and the pH oxidation-
reduction (Eh or redox). A salt is an ionic compound formed when both an acid and a base
neutralize one another. While salt solutions may often seem neutral, they can usually be either
be acidic or basic. Usually when a strong acid and a strong base are neutralized in the reaction
a neutral salt is formed:

H++OH−⇌H2O

5. Buffered solutions
By definition, a buffer solution is one that does not show and resists changes in pH by
adding small amounts of an acid or an alkali to it. Simply, an acidic buffer solution that has a pH
of less than 7. Acidic buffer solutions are usually made from a weak acid and one of its salts-
mostly a salt of sodium. A common example of that would be a solution mixture of ethanoic acid
and sodium ethanoate. In this case it would have a pH of 4.76 if the solution had equal molar
concentrations of both the acid and the salt. As long as they were the same, it wouldn't matter
what the concentrations were. In contrary, a solution to an alkaline buffer has a pH greater than
7. Usually its solutions are made from a weak base and one of its salts. A widely used example
is a mixture of a solution of ammonia and ammonium chloride. The solution would have a pH of
9.25 if these were combined in equal molar proportions. Again, whatever concentrations you
pick, it doesn't matter as long as they are the same. But how does a buffer solution works? To
answer this, a buffer solution must contain things that will remove any ions of hydrogen or
hydroxide that you may add to it-otherwise the pH will change. This is achieved in various ways
by acidic and alkaline buffering solutions.

6. Titration
Titration is a method of chemical analysis in which the quantity of some constituent of a
sample is calculated by applying a precisely known quantity of another component to the
measured sample with which the desired constituent reacts in a definite, known proportion. The
chemist must have a way of visually detecting that the neutralization reaction has occurred in
order to conduct an acid-base titration. An indicator is a substance in an acidic or basic solution
which has a distinctly different colour. Phenolphthalein is a widely used proxy for high baseline
titrations with acids. At the beginning of a titration the pH increases very slowly as the base is
added to acid. The pH starts to rise quickly, closer to the equivalence point. If the titration is a
strong acid with a strong base the pH is equal to 7 at the equivalence point. A little past the
equivalence point, the pH shift rate slows down once again. The term titration curve refers to a
graphical representation of the pH of a solution during a titration.