what determines strength of acids?

[Ella_hou]

what determines the strength of acids when comparing compounds?
in lecture, i'm pretty sure Lavelle said that weak bonds allow dissociation to happen easier. therefore, atoms with bigger radiuses (weaker) will be more acidic.
ex: HBR and HI HI will be the stronger acid?
also, what factors do you have to look at when comparing the strength of bases?

[Mihir Sukhatme 1D]

Yes, stronger acids dissociate easier. The strong acids we are dealing with have 100% dissociation. And you are correct about HI being a stronger acid than HCl.

[Meia Schram 1J]

Yes, your reasoning why HI is a stronger acid than HCl is completely correct! We know that strong acids will completely deprotonate (basically dissolve) all the way while weak acids won't. From previous lectures we learned that a single bond is weaker than a double or triple so that can be a factor as well as radius size like you were saying. Going down a group the size gets bigger weaking that bond making it easier to break.

Hope this helps!

[Andrew_Ramirez]

Acidity is tied to proton concentration essentially supporting the idea that a stronger acid releases more protons. A stronger acid will always release more protons meaning acidity will increase with things such as atomic radius. There is no specific measure for a strong acid but Professor Lavelle said that only the first halogen is a weak acid and the rest are strong acids.

[indigoaustin 3H]

Strong acids produce more protons in solution than a weak acids, which are incompletely ionized in solution. Strong acids have weaker bonds since the bonds must break to ionize.

[Serene Liu 3H]

Another thing I learned in Michael's UA session was a helpful mnemonic to memorize the 6 strong acids, and he said that anything else would basically be considered a weak acid. It's "SO I BRought NO CLean CLothes" which stands for H2SO4, H2I, HBr, HNO3, HCl, HClO4 and HClO3

[Neha Jonnalagadda 2D]

The strength of an acid is related to how likely it is to dissociate when is it aqueous. This means that compounds that dissociate easier are stronger acids.