Talk:Organic acid

Nitrochloric acid

I've never heard of nitrochloric acid, but perhaps you are looking for aqua regia, which contains both nitric acid and hydrochloric acid. It is one of the few acids able to dissolve gold.

Ben 13:46, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Carboxylic acid = strong acid?

I'm not quite sure carboxylic acids are all strong acids. I'd think of them as weak acids, with the conjugate salts being relatively strong bases. --Rifleman 82 02:14, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Miscible

Doesn't miscible imply insoluble? Yet "insoluble" appears in contrast to it. Unfree (talk) 03:48, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

No, miscible implies soluble. --Cubbi (talk) 02:59, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Hardware store

Crystalline oxalic acid is sold in hardware stores for bleaching wood and cleaning marble. Unfree (talk) 03:54, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Hydrocarbons are acids

The article should say that all hydrocarbons are organic acids, since they can all dissociate into carbanions and H⁺. Whoop whoop pull up ^{Bitching Betty | Averted crashes} 02:16, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

That's would be a misleading statement, even though it contains a grain of truth. Most hydrocarbons are not very acidic. They don't neutralise most bases. We could go into a long discussion about how easily various hydrocarbons can be deprotonated and so on, but it would be a distraction. Almost any molecule can be depronated (given a strong enough base like BuLi) but we only call them acids if they are deprotonated fairly easily by normal-strength bases like NaOH. If you mix acetic acid and sodium hydroxide, a salt forms, sodium acetate. If you mix hexane with NaOH, nothing happens. That's why we say acetic acid is an acid but hexane isn't. --Ben (talk) 13:31, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

By that definition acetylene would be considered an acid, as it forms acetylides. Whoop whoop pull up ^{Bitching Betty | Averted crashes} 17:40, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Again, acetylene is not what we'd normally refer to as an acid, because it takes very strong bases like BuLi to deprotonate it. The pK_a of alkynes is about 25, compared to 16 or so for alcohols, 14 for water, 10 for phenols, 5 for carboxylic acids and about 0 for mineral acids like HCl. This means an alkyne is about a billion times less acidic than an alcohol, which itself is not very acidic (ethanol, for example, is not going to burn a hole in your trousers, whereas HCl will). Acetylene is much more acidic than alkanes, but much less acidic than proper acids. That's why we don't call it an acid - it only donates protons to über powerful bases. --Ben (talk) 20:00, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Meldrum's acid? Whoop whoop pull up ^{Bitching Betty | Averted crashes} 04:21, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

As you can clearly see by reading that page, the structure was originally thought to be a carboxylic acid. As you can clearly see by reading that page, the is is as acidic as carboxylic acids, not a normal hydrocarbon. DMacks (talk) 04:36, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

"Sources of naturally occuring acids" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Sources of naturally occuring acids. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. Reyk _YO! 19:08, 27 November 2019 (UTC)