Ok, this is what I thought (sorry for my bad English, it's not my mother tongue)
- Phenacetin: the proton goes off the N and the negative charge is stabilized over the aromatic ring and the carbonyl. But a pKa of 2,2 means that it is a quite strong acid, but I thought that phenacetin is a weak base. Moreover an amide has a pKa of 14 when it is considered as an acid (so it is a very weak acid). Why is then the pKa of this amide 2,2?
Someone said to me that phenacetin would rather pick up another proton (because it is a weak base) and that we get a positive charge on the N. I find this a strange idea...
The problem is where the pKa's belong to. Does it belong to the acid/base or to the conjugated acid/base?
So what is now the right solution for this problem, I really don't know anymore.
- Caffeine: I found a pKa of 10,4 for this one, but that means that it is a rather stronge base and I'm almost sure that it is a weak base.
The person who told me about the pKa's thought that this pKa of 10,4 was wrong and that it should be something around pKa 1 (so a weak base and strong conjugated acid).
What do you think about it?
I'm not asking this to get an easy an quick answer on my questions, I 've really been thinking a lot about this. Ik thought I understood the theory behind the pKa's, but this problem is quite a strange one in my opinion.