Determining strong/weak acids/bases

[705795430]

Is there a way to determine if an acid/base is strong or weak by just looking at its formula? do we have to memorize all?

[Grace Lalanne 1D]

Hi! Rather than memorizing the molecules themselves, I would memorize the patterns. There are some acronyms and tricks to help remember too, I would recommend watching a Youtube video. Hope this helps!

[Carmen Lo 1L]

Hi! One of the TAs taught this trick to determine whether if certain acids (H2S04, HNO3, HCl03) are strong or not. You would add 2 to the H and compare with the O. If H is equal to or greater than H, then the acid is strong. For example using H2S04, add 2 to the H would give H=4 and 0=4, this would make H2S04 a strong acid. However, I still feel like it would be better to just memorize the strong acids. For strong bases they occupy the first and second column of the periodic table. I hope this helps!

[Cara W]

I would also note that if the problem gives a Ka or Kb value, then you know the acid/base must be weak since strong acids and bases do not have these values.

[Andres Ibarra 2F]

Hey! To be honest, I just tried memorizing the strong acids and bases first and then assumed that any other acid or base would be weak!

[Daniel Adolfo 2L]

It would be helpful to memorize the strong acids/bases since it will help you determine that everything else that isn't it is a weak acid/base. For strong acids, there are 7 acids to memorize and for the strong bases, it is everything with a cation from group 1 or 2. Hope this helps

[Miles Dailey 1K]

A few trends that I found helpful for memorizing is that many inorganic acids are strong while many organic acids are weak, and many strong bases are metal hydroxides and metal oxides while many weak bases have a N atom with a lone pair. Hope this helps!

[BB Richardson 2E]

A good trick to memorizing strong bases is by knowing that if the equation has an OH- and a cation from either group 1 or 2, it should be a strong base. For the strong acids, I memorized them by learning to say them out loud, phonetically.