Video Transcript
What product or products are formed
during the following neutralization reaction?
This question is asking about a
neutralization reaction. The general form of neutralization
reactions is that a base and an acid combine to produce water and a salt. This question is specifically
asking about the products formed during the reaction. Or if we combine these two
substances on the left-side of the equation, what chemicals appear on the right-hand
side of the equation?
If we look at our general formula,
we can more specifically ask, water and what salt will be produced by this
reaction? To answer this question, we need to
know what ions are present in the reactants and how will they combine to form the
products. Barium hydroxide breaks down into a
barium ion and two hydroxide ions. H2CO3, also known as carbonic acid,
breaks down into two hydrogen ions and one carbonate ion.
Listing the ions gives us a good
breakdown of what will happen when the products are formed. The hydroxide ion supplied by the
base and the hydrogen ion supplied by the acid will combine to form water, H2O. Meanwhile, the positive cation
supplied by the base and the negative anion supplied by the acid will combine to
form the salt. Written out, the products of the
reaction look like this: 2H2O plus BaCO3.
Since the base and the acid each
supply two ions, the reaction as a whole will produce two molecules of water,
indicated by the two before H2O. It’s also worth noting that our
salt, barium carbonate, is formed with one barium ion and one carbonate ion, because
the two plus charge from barium cancels out the two minus charge from the carbonate
ion. If the two ions that make up our
salt had different charges, we would need to use different numbers of each of them
to balance out the charges.
In a neutralization reaction, the
acid and the base each supply one ion to help make water. And they each supply one ion to
help make the salt. In the neutralization reaction
given here, the products that are formed are two molecules of water and barium
carbonate salt.
