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Determining The Equivalent Mass And Dissociation Constant Of An Unknown Weak Acid

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Determining the Equivalent Mass and Dissociation Constant of an Unknown Weak Acid by Titrimetry
Ka Chun Wong, and James Ross, Ph.D.
East Los Angeles, Chemistry Department,
1301 Avenida Cesar Chavez, Monterey Park, CA 91754
Abstract
Chemistry 102 is the study of kinetics – equilibrium constant. When it comes to the study of acid-base, equilibrium constant plays an important role that tells how much of the H+ ion will be released into the solution. In this lab, the method of titrimetry was performed to determine the equivalent mass and dissociation constant of an unknown weak monoprotic acid. For a monoprotic acid, it is known that pH = pKa + log (Base/Acid). When a solution has the same amount of conjugate base and bronsted lowry acid, log (Base/Acid) = 0 and pH = pKa. By recording the pH value throughout the titration process and determining the pH at half- equivalence point, the value of Ka can be easily calculated. In this experiment, the standardized NaOH solution has a concentration of 0.09834 M. The satisfactory sample size of known B was 0.2117 g. The average equivalent mass of the unknown sample was found to be 85.01 g, pKa was found to be 4.69, which was also its pH at half-equivalence point and Ka was found to be 2.0439×〖10〗^(-5). The error was 1.255% for equivalent mass and 0.11% for Ka. In other word, the experiment was very precise and accurate; the identity of the unknown sample was determined to be trans-crotonic by the method of titrimetry. Introduction

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