Physical and Chemical Properties of acids



 Hello fam, we are at it again! Like I said yesterday, the discussion today would focus on the properties of acids. By properties, I mean those things that make acids unique. The way acids behave. We would look at them individually in this study. The properties of acids could be physical or chemical.

Chemical properties are characteristics that can be seen or measured as a result of a substance's chemical transformation. Physical properties are characteristics that can be seen without carrying out a chemical reaction. Thus a chemical change is a property that must be demonstrated through a chemical reaction.
Physical properties of acids
The following are the physical properties of acids;
1) A dilute acid would have a sour taste. Have you ever tasted vinegar? That’s a sample of acetic acid and it tastes sour right?
2) Acids turn blue litmus paper red. A litmus paper is a strip of paper that is composed of an organic dye that changes color in response to the concentration of the hydrogen ion in the solution. I would discuss more about the litmus paper and other “indicators” in a later topic. An image of how the litmus paper turns from blue to red when added to an acid solution is shown here.
3) Acids that strong acids and are concentrated can be corrosive. This implies that they can peel off surfaces including your skin! A typical example of this is the test for the presence of glucose. The reaction that occurs is called charring. The concentrated acid literally burns off glucose leaving behind a char.
4) Strong acids are good conductors of electricity. As such, the solution of a strong acid is called an electrolyte since electric current can pass through it. The charge carriers in solution are ions and ions are moving about freely in a strong acid solution because it is completely dissociated so the solution serves as an electrolyte. The weak acid is not an electrolyte because it does not dissociate completely in solution. There are more acid molecules than ions in such a solution. Since the charge carriers in solution are ions, weak acids do not serve as electrolytes.
Note: It can be very disastrous to add an water to acid. This is because; the interaction of an acid with water gives off a lot of heat. The technical term for this is that the mixing of an acid with water is an ‘exothermic’ reaction. The heat given off may cause the mixture to boil and splash on your body. This is very dangerous because the acid may burn off your skin. See the image attached for clearer explanation of this. You should rather add acid to water and do that gradually.
Chemical properties of acids
1) Acids react with metals to cause the release of hydrogen gas. Up until now, we are dealing with the kind of acids that contain hydrogen. At a later time we would deal with other kinds of acids but let’s focus on these for now. These are the kind of acids that release hydrogen gas when they react with metals. Consider the reaction; 2HCl(aq) + Zn(s) -->ZnCl2(aq) + H2(g)
2) Acids react with bases to produce salts. Now we are quite moving ahead of ourselves! We have just mentioned two new terms; bases and salts. A base is a substance that can react with an acid to produce a salt and water. This is a very basic definition and we shall deal with the topic of bases later in this series. A salt is a substance that is formed when the hydrogen ion in an acid is replaced by another positive ion. This is again a very basic definition and we would x-ray the topic of salts later in the series. To show how acids interact with bases, consider the reaction; HCl(aq) + NaOH(aq) --> NaCl(aq) + H2O(l).
3) Acids react with trioxocarbonates IV to produce carbon IV oxide gas. Let’s take a look at a typical reaction to show this;
2HCl(aq) + Na2CO3(aq) ---> 2NaCl(aq) + H2O(l) + CO2(g)
Tomorrow, we shall continue our discussion by looking at the uses of acids and the basicity of acids. The discussion is getting hotter! See you then!
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