Carboxylic Acid

[Sydney Pell 2E]

What is the difference between a carboxylic acid and an oxoacid? How can you tell which is which?

[Chem_Mod]

Carboxylic acid is COOH: Carbon is double bonded to an O and attached to a hydroxide group. oxyacids is simply A-O-H where the A is anything covalently bonded to OH. Carboxylic acids are organic (C containing) oxoacids

[DHavo_1E]

What is the difference between a carboxylic acid and an oxoacid? How can you tell which is which?

Hi,

For future reference, I would also like to add that for carboxylic acids, you can determine the strength by the electronegativity of the groups bound to it. For example, for trichloroacetic acid (Cl3C2OOH) versus acetic acid (CH3COOH), the first is stronger because the chlorines are highly electronegative and delocalize the charges more than the group in acetic acid. Additionally, for oxoacids, you would look at the electronegativity (more electronegative means it is stronger because of delocalization of charge) if the numbers of oxygens are the same or the number of oxygen atoms when they differ (more oxygen atoms means more electronegativity and thus electron withdrawing power).