Neutralization Reactions

[isabella garcia - 1G]

I'm confused on how to go about completing J.7 in the textbook. " Select an acid and a base for a neutralization reaction that results in the formation of (a) potassium bromide; (b) zinc nitrite; (c) calcium cyanide, (d) potassium phosphate. Write the balanced equation for each reaction." How do you determine which atoms are paired together to result the aforementioned compounds?

[Lynne Xu 3K]

The general "form" of neutralization reactions are as follows:
Acid + Base -> Water + salt

In this case, the problem is giving you the "salt" part of the neutralization reaction. You would then pick an acid and base to create that given salt.

For example, for part a, potassium bromide (KBr)

HBr (acid) + KOH (base) -> H2O + KBr (salt)

[Michelle_Duong_3H]

Hello,

The salt itself will give you clues at what are the acids and bases. For example, in (a) the salt is potassium bromide. From the name, we can figure out that the molecular formula is KBr. Thus one reactant will contain K and the other will contain Br. H and K alone would not form a compound because they both tend to lose electrons to form cations. However K and the ion OH- can form a compound KOH, which is a common strong base. Similarly, Br would not form a compound with OH- because Br typically gains an electron to form an anion. Br can form a compound with H to form the strong acid HBr. You can check this by writing out the neutralization reaction:

KOH + HBr --> KBr + H2O

You can follow this strategy for the other problems.

Hope this helps!