Can an acid base reaction be at equilibrium?
And how would I know?
And how would I know?
1 Answer
Always... but...
...if they are both weak acids and bases, then we actually care.
#"CH"_3"COOH""/NaHCO"_3# makes an equilibrium#"CH"_3"CH"_2"ONa""/H"_2"O"# makes an equilibrium
etc. If one of them is strong, then who cares? The "equilibrium" would strongly favor the dissociated strong acid or base, and you basically won't even have the original acid or base in solution anymore. That leaves you with just one thing in solution, not two...
An acid-base reaction (that is, an acid+base IN water) always gets to AN equilibrium, but it won't be evenly balanced unless the relative weak acid strengths are similar. Given
#"pK"_a("CH"_3"COOH") = 4.76#
#"pK"_(a1)("H"_2"CO"_3) = 6.35#
#"pK"_a("H"_2"O") = 15.7#
#"pK"_a("CH"_3"CH"_2"OH") = 15.9#
show that the first equilibrium lies towards the right by a factor of
When an equilibrium lies to the right or left by a factor of
