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Q.Suppose that pH of monobasic and dibasic acid is the same. Does this mean that the molar concentrations of both acids are identical ?

Maharashtra MsbshseTextbookSubjectiveImportance★★★★★
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✓ Free question

Step 1. pH depends only on [H+] (or, more precisely, [H3O+]) -- pH=−log⁡10[H+]pH=-\log_{10}[H^+] -- it says nothing directly about how many moles of ACID were originally dissolved to produce that [H+].

Step 2. A monobasic acid HA can release at most one H+ per molecule; a dibasic acid H2B can, in principle, release up to two H+ per molecule (though typically the second ionization is much weaker than the first).

Step 3. Because of this, a dibasic acid could reach the SAME [H+] as a monobasic acid while starting from a lower molar concentration, since each of its molecules potentially contributes more H+.

Step 4. Separately, the two acids are almost certainly not equally strong (their Ka values, and hence their degrees of dissociation at a given concentration, will typically differ) -- so even restricting to their FIRST ionization step alone, matching [H+] does not require matching molar concentration.

Step 5. Both factors -- the different maximum H+ yield per molecule, and generally different Ka values -- mean that identical pH for a monobasic and a dibasic acid does not imply identical molar concentrations of the two acids.

✓Final answer

No -- equal pH only means equal [H+]; it does not fix the molar concentration, because a dibasic acid can supply up to two H+ per molecule and the two acids will generally have different dissociation constants.

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