Calculating pH of a weak salt

[Anirudh Mahadev 1G]

For salts like ammonium nitrate or potassium acetate, its easy to see whether the salt would be acidic or basic. How would we tell if the salt had both a weak acidic and a weak basic component, like ammonium acetate?

[Juliet Cushing_2H]

So far during this entire quarter we've only been asked to calculate the pH of your first example, a salt where one of the two ions can be ignored. Because we haven't been asked a hard question like ammonium acetate I doubt we'd be asked about it on the final. In general though, I'm pretty sure you'd have to look at solubility rules for salts like these to see if one of the two ions precipitates out of solution (because then you'd be left with only one ion to analyze).

[Nathan Chu 3H]

If I remember correctly, I don't think we will need to calculate the pH for a salt with a weak acid and weak base component. However, I would check with a TA just to be sure.