Classifying Salts as acid, base, or neutral

[405745446]

Hi,
This question comes mainly from achieve question 7. What are the steps involved in determining whether a salt is an acid, base, or neutral?

[Tomas Burgess 3F]

Hi! To determine if a salt is acidic, basic, or neutral, we look at the ions that form it. The neutral ions are all of the cations in groups 1 and 2, and the anions for chlorine, bromine, and iodine.
First, if both of the ions in a salt are neutral, then the salt itself is neutral. For example, NaCl is a neutral salt because Na+ and Cl- are both neutral ions. Next, if a salt has acidic ions (meaning they have properties of a Bronsted acid), then it is acidic. An example of this is NH4Cl, as Cl- is neutral but NH4+ is an acid; therefore, it will act as an acid, and one of its H atoms will be pulled away, creating H30+ and therefore making the solution acidic. The same applies for basic salts, and an example is CH3COONa, where CH3COO- is a base but Na+ is neutral. I hope this helps!

[Jessica Phung 1E]

To further his explain the answer above^^, you have to look at the cation and the anion of the salt. Once you've determined the two parts, determining whether the ino is neutral has to do with its strength as an acid or a base. For example, the reason that Cl- is considered neutral is because HCl is so strong of an acid that the conjugate base, Cl-, is so weak that it's considered neutral. So, you would do this for both ions. If, the conjugate acid or base is strong enough to take effect on the pH, then you can consider whether the solution will be acidic or basic. For example, if the salt was KCH3COO, you would split the ions into K+ and CH3COO-. Since you know KOH is a strong base then K+ is considered neutral. HCH3COO however, is considered a weak acid, meaning that it's conjugate base, CH3COO- would take effect on the pH, thus, the solution would be basic.

[Morgan Micallef 1A]

So it depends on both the charges of the ions and the strength of the positive or negative charges?