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Topic: The strength of Strong acids  (Read 2174 times)

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Offline JNW2

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The strength of Strong acids
« on: August 04, 2016, 10:50:39 AM »
Why the acid strength [tex] HClO4 > HCl > H2SO4>HNO3 [/tex]

Is These includes the factors
1) polarizability of conjugate base
2) electronegativity of central atom
3) s,p and s,p,d hybridization ?

Could you help me to explain this ?

Offline orthoformate

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Re: The strength of Strong acids
« Reply #1 on: August 04, 2016, 01:24:10 PM »
The rules on this forum are that you have to show us your best guess before we can help you. In order to make an educated guess I would google those factors you need to include.

Offline JNW2

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Re: The strength of Strong acids
« Reply #2 on: August 05, 2016, 09:03:09 AM »
The rules on this forum are that you have to show us your best guess before we can help you. In order to make an educated guess I would google those factors you need to include.

ClO4- more stable than Cl-  because of  the more atoms or the volume for electron polarizability ?

 Cl- more stable than HSO42- because of the effect of leaving group
the electronegativity of Cl > S  and the dissociation HSO4- to SO42- ?

HSO42- more stable than NO3- because of the more orbitals  s,p,d
in S than N which has only s,p orbitals?

Offline JNW2

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Re: The strength of Strong acids
« Reply #3 on: August 05, 2016, 07:38:08 PM »
Any help is much appreciated.

Offline AWK

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Re: The strength of Strong acids
« Reply #4 on: August 06, 2016, 12:44:32 AM »
Your problem is quite nice explained in Wikipedia (acid strength). Also all factors that influence acid strength are discussed.
But one sentence in wikipedia is not true: " and sulfuric acid (H2SO4). In aqueous solution, each of these essentially ionizes 100%". Sulfuric acid is strong, but only loosing the first proton, and may be treated as completely ionized (for student calculations within 5% error) only for concentration ~10-4 or less (since K2). And a few, relatively common, strong acids are missing, namely H4P2O7, HMnO4, H2CrO4, H2Cr2O7.
In this article also super acids (with wikipedia link) are mensioned. HClO4 is treated as superacid.
AWK

Offline docnet

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Re: The strength of Strong acids
« Reply #5 on: August 22, 2016, 01:46:07 PM »
Chlorine is a more electronegative central atom than Sulfur, and Sulfer is more electronegative than Nitrogen.

HClO4 is a stronger than acid than HCl because the dipole moments caused by the O draw the electron density away from the hydrogen molecule. 

As for why H2SO4 is a stronger acid than HNO3, here's a link to the Boisestate chemistry website. Basically the formal charges on the S is more positive than the one on the N, and counter intuitively this makes the Hydrogen atoms in H2SO4 have a more positive character.

EDIT: forgot to include the link

https://chemistry.boisestate.edu/richardbanks/inorganic/acid-base/acid_base9.htm

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