Chapter 14 · Acids and Bases
14.1Sour Patch Kids and International Spy Movies
7 min · two checks
Predict
What property of acids do you already know from taste, and why is taste a terrible lab test?
The idea
- List household properties of acids and bases.
- Treat taste as history, not as a method.
Sour candy is sour because of acids such as citric and malic acid. Vinegar is acetic acid. Soap and drain cleaner are basic. The old observations — sour versus bitter, litmus red versus blue, reaction with metals or with grease — are real and still unsafe as tests. Concentrated bases attack skin. Concentrated acids do too. You identify them with indicators, pH meters, and reactions, not with your tongue.
This chapter replaces the household list with definitions that predict products, a distinction between strong and weak, a number scale (pH), and buffers, the mixtures that keep pH from swinging. The spy-movie vial of acid is usually bad chemistry. The real usefulness of acids and bases is ordinary: food, blood, batteries, and every titration you will run.
Keep these
- Acids taste sour; bases taste bitter and feel slippery. Do not test that way.
- Indicators and meters replace taste.
- The chapter’s tools are definitions, strength, pH, titration, and buffers.