Question

Please tell me how to identify if in a reaction the medium needs to be acidic or basic? Its pretty urgent....

Answer 1

are you trying to neutralize something? It really all depends on the reaction you're working on You need to be a bit more specific.

Answer 2

You could use litmus paper to get an approximation as to what your pH is.. That
s one way to start if you want to get an idea as to whether you'll need an acid or base.

Answer 3

no not in that way basically there's this reaction C12 H22 O11 + H20 ---in acidic medium---> C6 H12 O6 + C6H12O6.......while teaching this our teacher said that the reaction takes place in acidic medium and said i should know why but i dont know what is the reason behind it?

Answer 4

I would say use your knowledge of H2O. pKa of water ~15.7
use that to find the conjugate. Use the pKa of conjugate to tell you which way the reaction might proceed. That might also help.

Answer 5

how to find the conjugate? we havent been thaught about it. Is there any other way that you can suggest please?

Answer 6

The conjugate of water... you should of learned that in general chemistry.
Such as HA -> H+ and A-
conugate acid of HA, etc.,

Answer 7

that reaction looks like a disaccharide hydrolysis. it might be that the medium is to be acidic as the mechanism may that proceed through the protonation of the oxygen at the ether-linkage.

Answer 8

Hard to tell with just a molecular formula. Isomers are quite a few

Answer 9

Aaron is right. It is the acid hydrolysis of a disaccharide bond. The hydronium ion acts on the disachharide linkage. You need an acidic medium to create the hydronium ion, H3O+.

Answer 10

Oh wow.. I vaguely remember something abt this from my structural biochem course. I would of never guessed about this. Lol.

Answer 11

thanks @abb0t @Preetha @aaronq for the help, i finally understood.....@ aaranq can you plz tell me all the names of all reactions that require acidic medum and those that require basic. ....for example hydrolysis reactions require acidic and so on.
Please if any one can bifurcate that for me i wud be grateful.....Thanks

Answer 12

of all reactions? lol i don't think i'm qualified to make such a generalization. It's best to approach these problems in a case-by-case basis. If you've learned about reaction mechanisms in organic chemistry then you see what i mean.