Question

How does acetic acid differ from hydrochloric acid in degree of conductivity and why?

Answer 1

For a solution to be a good conductive is when it contains a high number ions that will act as electrons shuttles from one electrode to another. Solutions that can produce a high number of ions will be highly conductive solutions.

Complete step by step answer:
Acids are the compounds which are given off ${{\text{H}}^{+}}$ ions. A strong acid is an acid that completely dissociates and produces 1st of hydrogen ions.
Whereas a weak acid is an acid that ionizes only slightly in an aqueous solution and produces less ${{\text{H}}^{+}}$ ions.
In the above question $\text{HCl}$ is a strong acid and $\text{C}{{\text{H}}_{\text{3}}}\text{COOH}$ is a weak acid.
In $\text{HCl}$ hydrogen $({{\text{H}}^{+}})$ ion and chlorine ion $(\text{C}{{\text{l}}^{-}})$ ionizes completely in water.
$HCl(aq)\to H^{+}(aq) + OH^{-}(aq)$
Acetic acid a weak acid has incomplete ionization generally ionization is less than $10$
$\text{C}{{\text{H}}_{\text{3}}}\text{COOH(}aq\text{)}{{\text{H}}^{+}}(aq)+\text{C}{{\text{H}}_{\text{3}}}\text{CO}{{\text{O}}^{-}}(aq)$
We already know that a solution to be good conductive it contains high number of ions so from strong and weak acid we can conclude that hydrochloric acid $\text{H}$ good conductivity because it will produce more ${{\text{H}}^{+}}$ ions.
And acetic acid has less conductivity than $\text{HCl}$ because it produce less hydrogen ion (weak acid)
Final Answer:
We can conclude that $\text{HCl}$ has better conductivity than acetic acid.

Note: As we know that acetic acid is a weak acid i.e., the degree of dissociation of acetic acid is very less but we can increase the degree of dissociation due to various factors –
By increasing the dilution
By decreasing the concentration of the solution
By changing the temperature of the solution
By common ion effect