Sign up for your FREE 7-day trial.Get instant access to all the benefits of SparkNotes PLUS! Cancel within the first 7 days and you won't be charged. We'll even send you a reminder.
SparkNotes Plus subscription is $4.99/month or $24.99/year as selected above. The free trial period is the first 7 days of your subscription. TO CANCEL YOUR SUBSCRIPTION AND AVOID BEING CHARGED, YOU MUST CANCEL BEFORE THE END OF THE FREE TRIAL PERIOD. You may cancel your subscription on your Subscription and Billing page or contact Customer Support at custserv@bn.com. Your subscription will continue automatically once the free trial period is over. Free trial is available to new customers only.
Step 2 of 4
Choose Your Plan
Step 3 of 4
Add Your Payment Details
Step 4 of 4
Payment Summary
Your Free Trial Starts Now!
For the next 7 days, you'll have access to awesome PLUS stuff like AP English test prep, No Fear Shakespeare translations and audio, a note-taking tool, personalized dashboard, & much more!
Thanks for creating a SparkNotes account! Continue to start your free trial.
Please wait while we process your payment
Your PLUS subscription has expired
We’d love to have you back! Renew your subscription to regain access to all of our exclusive, ad-free study tools.
Titration is a general class of experiment where a known property of
one solution is used to
infer an unknown property of another solution. In acid-base
chemistry, we often use titration to determine the pH of a certain solution.
A setup for the titration of an acid with a base is shown in :
Figure %: A titration setup
We use this instrumentation to calculate the amount of unknown
acid in the receiving
flask by measuring the amount of base, or titrant, it takes to neutralize
the acid.
There are two major ways to
know when the solution has been neutralized. The first uses a pH meter in
the receiving flask adding
base slowly until the pH reads exactly 7. The second method uses an
indicator. An indicator is an
acid or base whose conjugate acid or conjugate base has a color
different from that of the original
compound. The color changes when the solution contains a 1:1 mixture of
the differently colored
forms of the indicator. As you know from the Henderson-Hasselbalch
equation, the pH equals
the pKa of the indicator at the endpoint of the
indicator. Since we know the pH of the
solution and
the volume of
titrant added, we can then deduce how much base was needed to neutralize
the unknown sample.
Titration Curves
A titration curve is drawn by plotting data attained during a titration,
titrant volume on the x-axis and pH on the y-axis. The titration
curve serves to profile the unknown solution. In the shape of the curve lies
much chemistry and an
interesting summary of
what we have learned so far about acids and bases.
The titration of a strong acid with a strong base produces the
following titration curve:
Figure %: Titration curve of a strong base titrating a strong acid
Note the sharp transition region near the equivalence point on the
.
Also remember that the equivalence point for a strong acid-strong base
titration curve is exactly 7
because the salt produced does not undergo any hydrolysis
reactions.
