acidbase chemistry is important to understand because a lot of the chemistry that happens in the body involves proton transfer which is a kind of acidbase chemistry only certain things in the body can act as acids or bases and when we do chemistry in a laboratory we can use acids and bases that exist in the body or any other acids and bases we want whether they occur in nature or not one of the most common acids we use is called hydrochloric acid which is found in the body as it is produced by the stomach to aid in digestion this is a very simple molecule consisting of just a hydrogen atom and a chlorine atom because it is made of only two elements we can call this a binary acid which is one of two main types of acids that we will use in the laboratory in a binary acid there will always be hydrogen because that's the element that makes it an acid and the hydrogen atom or atoms will be coal bound to some other non-metallic element here are some binary acids along with the gases they are derived from the names change in aquous solution because only in the context of an aquous solution can these compounds behave as acids the names of the oxy acids are very similar to one another the only difference arrives when we refer to the other element in the acid besides hydrogen these names all begin with the prefix Hydro referring to the hydrogen then comes the name of the other element in the acid and lastly we attach the suffix i so these first four will be hydrofluoric acid hydrochloric acid hydr bromic acid and hydro iotic acid which are the binary acids formed when we combine hydrogen with the hogent these are the most widely used binary acids in addition we can make binary acids with the calogen like hydrosulfuric acid which is already listed and the additional molecules shown here water although not appreciably acidic technically counts as a binary acid even though we typically don't refer to it as such hydrosulfuric acid however is reasonably acidic as well as hydroselenic acid and hydrotelluric acid though these are far less widely used and now we know about binary acids