Chemistry task on diluting hydrochloric acid solution?

ByJeremy Edberg

Hello,

I have a problem with the following task:

"100 ml of hydrochloric acid solution with a pH of 1 is to be adjusted to pH 7. Determine the volume of water that would be necessary to achieve this by dilution."

But if you think about it without doing any calculations, shouldn't that be impossible? After all, water has a pH of exactly 7, and if you add even a drop of hydrochloric acid to any amount of water, the pH will be less than 7. So, is the problem impossible to solve?

(2 votes)
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indiachinacook
indiachinacook
1 year ago
  • If you dilute 1:10, you will get a liter with pH=2
  • If you dilute 1:10 again, you get ten liters of pH=3
  • If you dilute 1:10 again, you get a hundred liters of pH=4
  • If you dilute 1:10 again, you get 1000 liters (1 m3) with pH=5
  • If you dilute 1:10 again, you get 10 m3 with pH=6
  • If you dilute 1:10 again, you get 100 m3 with pH=6.8
  • If you dilute 1:10 again, you get 1000 m3 with pH=6.98
  • If you dilute 1:10 again, you get 10000 m3 with pH=6.998

I hope that’s enough.

(in practice, however, the pH will never come into the range of 7, because the water you use for dilution has presumably dissolved CO2 from the air and therefore itself has a pH of ≅5.5)

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GEU20C
GEU20C
1 year ago

Practice makes you master, learn.

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