Question:Draw the products of the acid–base reaction when

a. HCl is the acid and NH₃ is the base.

b. H₂O is the acid and ^-NH₂ is the base.

Acidity is defined as the proton releasing ability in a solution of a compound. The more is the ability of releasing H⁺, the more it shows acidic character. The main driving force of releasing H⁺ is the stabilisation of the conjugate base.

A compound is said to be Bronsted base if it stabilizes in its conjugated acid form, that means when a compound has the urge to capture proton to stabilize itself is called the base. The more is the stability of the conjugated acid form, the more basic the compound is.

Acid and base react to produce salt and water in the reaction.

Here HCl is a strong acid and NH₃ is a Lewis base(weak), so the product will be a salt with pH<7 (acidic).

$HCl+N{H}_3\rightleftharpoons {\mathrm{NH}}_4\mathrm{Cl}$

b. H₂O is the acid and ^-NH₂ is the base.

Here, ^-NH₂ is strong base and H₂O is a weak acid. So, it this reaction, product will be a conjugated weak acid and strong bases of the respective strong base and weak acid.

${\mathrm{H}}_2\mathrm{O}+{\mathrm{NH}}_2^{-}\rightleftarrows {\mathrm{NH}}_3+{\mathrm{OH}}^{-}$

NH₃ is the weak conjugated base of NH₂^- and OH^- is the strong conjugated acid of H₂O.