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This page explains the terms strong and weak as applied to acids.
As a part of this it defines and explains what is meant by pH, Ka
and pKa.
It is important that you don't confuse the words strong and weak
with the terms concentrated and dilute.
As you will see below, the strength of an acid is related to the
proportion of it which has reacted with water to produce ions. The
concentration tells you about how much of the original acid is
dissolved in the solution.
It is perfectly possible to have a concentrated solution of a weak
acid, or a dilute solution of a strong acid. Read on . . .
Strong acids
Explaining the term "strong acid"
We are going to use the Bronsted-Lowry definition of an acid.
Note: If you don't know what the Bronsted-Lowry theory of
acids is, you should read about theories of acids and bases
on another page in this section. You don't need to spend time
reading about Lewis acids and bases for the purposes of this
present page.
Use the BACK button on your browser when you are ready to
return to this page.
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These reactions are all reversible, but in some cases, the acid is
so good at giving away hydrogen ions that we can think of the
reaction as being one-way. The acid is virtually 100% ionised.
For example, when hydrogen chloride dissolves in water to make
hydrochloric acid, so little of the reverse reaction happens that we
can write:
At any one time, virtually 100% of the hydrogen chloride will have
reacted to produce hydroxonium ions and chloride ions. Hydrogen
chloride is described as a strong acid.
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Weak acids
Explaining the term "weak acid"
A weak acid is one which doesn't ionise fully when it is dissolved in
water.
Ethanoic acid is a typical weak acid. It reacts with water to
produce hydroxonium ions and ethanoate ions, but the back
reaction is more successful than the forward one. The ions react
very easily to reform the acid and the water.
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You may find the Ka expression written differently if you work from
the simplified version of the equilibrium reaction:
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Ka (mol dm-3)
acid
hydrofluoric acid
5.6 x 10-4
methanoic acid
1.6 x 10-4
ethanoic acid
1.7 x 10-5
hydrogen sulphide
8.9 x 10-8
These are all weak acids because the values for Ka are very small.
They are listed in order of decreasing acid strength - the Ka values
get smaller as you go down the table.
However, if you aren't very happy with numbers, that isn't
immediately obvious. Because the numbers are in two parts, there
is too much to think about quickly!
To avoid this, the numbers are often converted into a new, easier
form, called pKa.
An introduction to pKa
pKa bears exactly the same relationship to Ka as pH does to the
hydrogen ion concentration:
If you use your calculator on all the Ka values in the table above and
convert them into pKa values, you get:
acid
hydrofluoric acid
5.6 x 10-4
3.3
methanoic acid
1.6 x 10-4
3.8
ethanoic acid
1.7 x 10-5
4.8
hydrogen sulphide
8.9 x 10-8
7.1
Note: Notice that unlike Ka, pKa doesn't have any units.
Notice that the weaker the acid, the larger the value of pKa. It is
now easy to see the trend towards weaker acids as you go down
the table.
Remember this:
The lower the value for pKa, the stronger the acid.
The higher the value for pKa, the weaker the acid.
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Note: If you need to know about Ka and pKa, you are quite
likely to need to be able to do calculations with them. You
will probably need to be able to calculate the pH of a weak
acid from its concentration and Ka or pKa. You may need to
reverse this and calculate a value for pKa from pH and
concentration. I can't help you with these calculations on this
site, but they are all covered in detail in my chemistry
calculations book.
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