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Is water an acid or a base? (mander.xyz)

submitted 21 hours ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Is this about the anomaly of water? I vaguely remember it from school

[–] [email protected] 16 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

No, this is about water being amphoteric compound meaning it behaves like a acid or base in different circumstances.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amphoterism

[–] [email protected] 5 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

The water molecule is amphoteric in aqueous solution

A water molecule in aqueous solution. How can you tell it's being dissolved, or doing the dissolving?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

In high school I was told that one in avagadros number of water molecules splits into ions.
Is that right? It seems like a very small amount.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 17 hours ago

The dissociation constant of pure water at RT is 1x10^-14. This is many magnitudes more than just one per avogadros number. The "trick" is that any given molecule of water basically has that 1x10^-14 chance of being split or otherwise whole at any given time.