Question
Question: What are strong and weak bases?...
What are strong and weak bases?
Solution
We also remember that the ions define the acidity or basicity of a compound. Any chemical species when dissolved in water dissociates into ions and thus causes basicity or acidity. The degree of dissociation defines strong or work character.
Complete answer:
We must have to know that the basicity is defined as the ability to donate oh - ions in the solution. Whenever a base dissociates it gives oh- and it's corresponding conjugate acid.
A species that dissociates completely in the solution and gives OH− ions is termed as a strong base whereas a species that gets partially dissociated and gives few OH− ions is termed as a weak base.
For example
Strong base: NaOH
The dissociation can be written as,
NaOH→Na++OH−
Weak base: NH4OH
The dissociation can be written as,
NH4OH→NH4++OH−
Both the base gives hydroxide ions but in case of NaOH the dissociation is 100% and in case of NH4OHthe dissociation is less than 100%. Several theories are there which define strong base and weak base.
The ability to donate OH- comes in the arrhenius theory.
Whereas there are two more theory that defines bases:
One is the Lewis theory
The other is Bronsted Lowry Theory
According to the Arrhenius Theory a strong base is the one which donates a lone pair of electrons.
The Bronsted Lowry Theory states that a species that accepts protons is called a base. So a species that has higher tendency to accept protons is termed as a strong base while the one with lesser tendency as a weak base.
Note:
We have to know that the base dissociation constant also defines the basicity of a species. It is denoted by Kb . The constant gives the ratio of concentration of hydroxide ion and its conjugate acid with that of base involved.