all right let's introduce ourselves to acids what is an acid there are a couple different ways of defining an acid the first way we're going to Define an acid is based on the arous definition of an acid according to oranus an acid is anything that increases the hydrogen ion content of water that means that acids have to have what if they're going to increase the hydrogen ion cont content of acids all acids must have hydrogen right in order to be an oranus acid you have to have an Hy a hydrogen not only that but that hydrogen has to be capable of leaving the molecule therefore you're clue that something is an acid or when you're looking at a compound and just trying to decide decide whether it's an acid or not your big clue is going to be that hydrogen is generally the first element listed all right so let's take a look at your prototypical acid here here hydrochloric acid hydrochloric acid when placed in water separat into the hydrogen ion and the chloride ion all acids follow a pattern all acids consist of a hydrogen ion and then a rest of the rest of the acid and we always denote this rest of the acid acid using a capital letter A the acid will always separate into two parts one of those two parts will all separate into two parts when dissolved in water one of those two parts will be a hydrogen ion now hydrogen is just the worst person to break up with right because when hydrogen breaks up with the acid it leaves its electron behind so it goes away and it becomes the hydrogen ion with a positive charge and it leaves this electron behind so the rest of the acid or the acid part that's left behind also referred to as the conjugate base has a negative charge I should have written an a there right so what you'll see is an acid will always break up into a hydrogen ion and a an ion this definition which may I believe be the definition given to you by your book creates a false impression it says that an acid increases the hydrogen ion content of water there's a problem with that what is a hydrogen ion a hydrogen iion is actually a proton right hydrogen atom only consists of one electron and one proton so your hydrogen ion is actually a proton or pure unadulterated negative Char I mean pure unadulterated positive charge so if an acid produces pure unadulterated Nega positive charge into the water what do you think's going to happen well water water is a funny molecule water has a shape that makes it bent where it has hydrogen sticking backwards behind the oxygen kind of like a V and sticking out in front of the molecule sort of like antenna on an insect are two lone pairs of electrons so you have a molecule in water that has these electrons sticking out here in front and these electrons have a partial negative charge to them this partial negative charge is irresistible to this lonely hydrogen ion this lonely hydrogen ion says holy cow those are some lonely electrons and hey let's face it I'm pure positive energy and who can resist me the water molecues sure can't what happens is the water molecule sees that proton and will actually donate one of its lone pairs of electrons to that hydrogen to form an ion known h3o+ known as the hydronium ion therefore a better definition of acids is an acid is anything that increases the hydronium ion concentration of water this attraction of water molecules for that lone for that proton and an acid is so great that you'll never in water actually see or never in water actually find those protons floating around lonely they never exist even for a PC another way to view this acidbase reaction would be you have the anion you have your water with this lone pairs of electrons sticking out here and what happens is as soon as that acid hits the water the water molecules crowd around shove a pair of electrons at the hydrogen the hydrogen says Ah I like water's electrons better than whoever I'm bonded to you can keep my electron because water's offering me two that look a lot better so never in water will you actually find the hydrogen ion instead you'll always form find the acid forming the hydronium ion therefore a lot of textbooks simply skip the hydrogen ion part and go straight to the definition as an acid being anything that increases the hydrone ium ion content of water therefore they'll write the acid reaction as shown here let's take a look at the prototypical hydrochloric acid they'll say hydrochloric acid placed in water produces the hydronium ion and the chloride ion if you look at this reaction you'll say or I've had students say in the past hey this reaction isn't balanced right after all I have an oxygen over here as a product and I don't see it over here as a reactant also I have two extra hydrogens over here that I don't have over here that oxygen and that Hy extra hydrogen comes from water we place water over the arrow here instead of on the reactant side because water's ubiquitous right we know that we're dealing with an aquous solution plus we don't want water to be the hero of the reaction we don't want to focus on water being the participant what we're really interested in is we're really interested in this molecule and these two molecules not the water so we kind of place water out of the way here by placing it over the arrow and you'll see that done quite a bit in chemistry we want to tell you something a reactant but we don't want you to focus on it so we'll throw it up here above the arrow so a generic reaction of an acid would be acid ha reacts with water teal the hydronium ion and an annion that's your general pattern you all right now let's look at two broad categories of acids strong acids and weak acids before we go any further I want you to stop and write down Gan gray stop and write down Gan gray j e a n g re y Gan gray hope you're writing down Gan gray we divide acids into two categories strong acids and weak acids strong acids are acids that dissociate completely in water what I mean by dissociate completely in water I mean is it comes completely apart if I start off with one molar of hydrochloric acid a strong acid and no hydronium and no chloride at the end of my reac action all my hydrochloric acid will be converted to hydronium and to Chloride I'll have 100% conversion so a strong acid my my acid reaction goes totally to completion there are six strong acids you're responsible for knowing these six strong acids fortun you know them already really if it's been thrown in somebody's face in a movie it's a strong acid you have nitric acid sulfuric acid perchloric acid Hydrochloric hydrob bromic Hydro iotic these three you kind of have to memorize but hopefully if you think about things thrown in people's faces in movies you've already got these three memorized these three are all hens right hydrogen chloride hydrogen bromide hydrogen Hydro iotic acid note there is one hogen not on this list what acid do we not see on this list we don't see Florine right common way I can Mis make you um mess up on an exam is hydrochloric acid is a weak acid it's not on this list so it's a weak acid these six acids that you see on this list right here are your only strong acids I should have written it bigger but any acid that is not one of these six that is not on this list is what's known as a weak acid so what is a weak acid weak acids are acids that dissociate less than 100% not only that all weak acids exist in a state of what's known as equilibrium let's take a look at the weak acid hydrochloric acid hydrofluoric acid placed in water forms the hydronium ion and the fluide ion however it doesn't want to do so with a 100 % commitment weak acids simply put are acids with commitment issues if I start off with 100 molecules of hydr Floric acid when my reaction goes to when my reaction stops 80% of those Hydrochloric acids will still be together only 20 of them will have broken up unlike my strong acids where all of my starting molecules become products for a weak acid only some of them do not only that but it's more complicated weak acids behave like that nightmare High School couple or your typical sitcom couple better yet right we all knew in high school that one couple who they were together in the morning they broke up at night they were together on Valentine's Day they broke up the day be they broke up the next day or or or the guy didn't want to buy a gift so he broke up the day before Valentine's Day and then got back together the day after right one moment they're together the next moment they're apart right every sitcom has a couple like this right um Robin and Ted Robin and Barney um Ross and Rachel yes we all know what we're talking about here same way for our hydrochloric acid or our weak acids weak acids are constantly breaking up and then getting back together at the same time that you have some couples breaking up you have other couples reforming because my weak acid is constantly breaking up and getting back together the arrow for a weak acid reaction takes a funny looking shape the arrow for a weak acid reaction is a half forward arrow with a very small backwards pointing half Arrow underneath it this Arrow this Arrow shape is used to to denote a state known as dynamic equilibrium and what that means is that you have a forward reaction and a backwards reaction occurring at the same time however your system or your reaction eventually reaches a state where the number of couples breaking up equals the number of couples getting back together and while the molecules that are together are breaking up is constantly changing the ratio of couples broken up to the ratio of the couples still together is constant when this this situation occurs it's known as dynamic equilibrium so for my weak acid here I have molecules breaking up and I have molecules getting back together however if I sampled the population at a at any given time what I discover is that I always have 80 molecules together and I always have 20 molecules broken up what 20 molecules are together and what 80 molecules are broken up would be different but my ratio of those molecules broken up to those together would never waver from 20 to 80 when this situation occurs my system has reached what's known as dynamic equilibrium and next semester more than half the chapters actually deal with mathematically examining equilibrium and the effects of equilibrium all you need to know right now is that weak acids exist in this dynamic equilibrium and as a result of this dynamic equilibrium at any given period of time you're going to find some of your acid molecules together and some of them apart in other words your weak acids disassociate at less than 100% someone who never gives less than 100% is Olivia mum in her portrayal of psylock why don't you write down psylock PS y l o c k e psylock apparently the theme for today is psychic X X-Men um psylock one thing you have to be able to do is you have to be able to write an equation for an acid writing an equation for an acid is pretty easy couple quick things in terms of terminology though when you have an acid you're removing a proton from the acid because you're removing a proton that means you're leaving an electron behind so whenever you so whatever is Left Behind is going to have a negative charg this negatively charged anion is referred to as a conjugate base the other product of your acid dissociation reaction is always going to be the hydronium ion so an acid disassociation reaction will produce a hydronium ion and an anion let's look at this in a stepwise fashion you're told to write the equation for the dissociation of acetic acid in an acid reaction you are removing a hydrogen leaving the Anon behind so the first thing you do in writing the the reaction is you write the acid on the reactant side so we've got acetic acid Remember by convention you always list an acid as being in the aquous phase on the product side you're going to write the hydronium ion again in the aquous phase and then you're going to write the conjugate base or the annion so what you do is you take your acid to determine your conjugate base you take your acid you remove the hydrogen from it and you add a negative sign so if I remove a hydrogen I'm left with my acetate ion sorry my handwriting got really sloppy there because I was we're trying to write too small your acetate ion again in the aquous phase now the last thing you have to do is you have to add your arrow if you have a strong acid you draw a one-way Arrow if you have a weak acid you draw your double-headed arrow and then you write water above it we have a weak acid why because acetic acid isn't one of those six strong acids that you've had to memorize so I'm going to draw my double-headed arrow and I'm going to write water up above it and that's how you write the acid disassociation reaction okay how about you try one okay you know the drill here pause me and try this on your own all right hopefully that wasn't one of those long awkward pauses like I often experience on dates but one of those rather comfortable silence pauses that you experienced as you work this problem write the equation for the disassociation of nitric acid write the acid on the reactant side should always be in the aquous phase then on the reactant side write the hydronium ion then write the conjugate base remember you always figure out the conjugate base by taking your acid removing the hydrogen adding a negative sign so when you remove the hydrogen you're left with the Nitric I nitrate ion now we need to determine our Arrow nitric acid is a strong acid it's one of the six acids you've memorized so you simply write a regular Arrow and you place water above it and there's your acid disassociation reaction let's look at a special case of acids known as polyprotic acids polyprotic acids are acids that have more than one hydrogen they can lose you'll know you have a prod polyprotic acid when once again you have hydrogen as your first element however you'll have more than one of those hydrogens as the first element for example sulfurous acid you have two hydrogens sulfuric acid you have two hydrogens phosphoric acid you have three hydrogens the important thing to remember when it comes to polyprotic acids is that polyprotic acids can only lose one hydrogen at a time let's take a look at what I'm talking about the Temptation is to say all right I have sulfurous acid here it's got two hydrogens so I bet it's going to do this that's an AQ down there that chicken scratch um the Temptation is to say that this is going to occur and a lot of people will try to put on exams that this is what occurs that's wrong that doesn't occur that does not happen your sulfurous acid won't lose two hydrogens at once instead it loses one at a time what let's take a look at what really does happen so for sulfurous acid if I have sulfurous acid it's going to start off behaving like a normal acid I'm a little too close to the edge there I'm going to there we go and it's going to lose its first Hydrogen some of the molecules will lose its first hydrogen and form hydronium and we're only going to remove that that first Hydrogen now the removal of this first Hydrogen does two things it creates hydronium and it creates the bisulfate ion now the bisulfate ion is an acid because it has a hydrogen it can lose two so this bisulfate ion can function as a weak acid and it too can lose a hydrogen and act as an acid however it's going to be much more difficult for B sulfate to lose its hydrogen than it was for the sulfurous acid molecule why is that well remember we're not removing a hydrogen we're removing a hydrogen ion we're removing a positively charged um particle what charge does our weak acid have at the moment now that we removed that first Hydrogen what charge does it have it has a negative charge right so it's going to be much more difficult for this positive ion to leave the negative ion I kind of like to think of polyprotic acids kind of like that well let's first do the math here and then deal conceptual most polyprotic acids will lose with a great deal of will fairly easily lose that first Hydrogen it'll be much more difficult for them however to lose the second hydrogen if we start off the process with 100 molecules of sulfus acid of all sulfurous acid then at our end point or at our equilibrium let's let's be generous here because suurus is fairly strong 50% of them have broken up to form hydronium and B the bisulfide ion well of those 50 bisulfate ions not all of them are going to want to break up of those 50 40 of them may stay together and only 10 of them will break up so if we looked at our movements in terms of a if if we looked at our ratios and our reaction in terms of just our starting material up here very little of our starting material wound up becoming that in this little mockup scenario I've only got 10% going there in reality it would be much much less than 10% we're talking 1% or less really very very small amount with the exception of a few freak um molecules here it's much much harder to remove that second hydrogen ion I like to think of it like this sulfate I mean sulfite here sulfite here is a guy who's dating two girls what happens when those two girls find out about each other one of them is out of here one of them is saying so long you're an evil son of a gun I'm never going to have anything to do with you again right but then another one says oh good that one's gone now I've got the sulfide ion all to myself so once it's gotten rid of the other hydrogen ion it's going to stick around for a while yes see what I'm saying so it's much easier for your polyprotic acids to lose one hydrogen much more difficult for it to lose the second what does that mean though in terms of practical applications what that means is that when you're asked to write the disassociation reaction for a polyprotic acid you're only going to write that first disassociation there is some effect from that second disassociation but we'll deal with that next semester but for the meantime when you're faced with a polyprotic acid you're going to think of the removal of just one of those protons just like a polyprotic acid only wants to remove one hydrogen Cyclops looks like he has one eye when he's wearing his visor he has two eyes really but you know he wears that visor and it looks like he has one and that's why they call him Cyclops um why don't you write down Cyclops Cy c l o PS Cyclops all right polyprotic acids your turn write the disassociation reaction for Carbonic acid all right hopefully you paused me and wrote this you treat a polyprotic acid like you would a typical acid carbonic acid isn't one of your acids you've memorized therefore it's a weak acid so it gets a double-headed arrow with water on top of it you have the hydronium ion then you've removed that one hydrogen so you get the bicarbonate ion again in the aquous phase chemistry's easy life is hard yeah yes that's the acid disassociation reaction for Carbonic acid how is being a chemist like being in a heavy metal band because you're dropping the base either way which coincidentally enough brings us to the next topic of conversation Aus bases a uranous base is any substance that increases the hydroxide ion concentration of water in case you forgotten o Nega is the hydroxide ion your typical arenus base reaction consists of a base often a solid placed in water to yield a cat acids yell at an anion for for bases we're getting a cation and I can't spell today and a hydroxide ion now bases are kind of scary when we look at their generic reaction po get it kind of scary um you always form a cation because this cation is going to give its electron to the hydroxide and the hydroxide ion there are only a few arus bases you need to be aware of there are six strong arous bases just like strong acids these strong bases disassociate 100% in water they also form a pattern on the Periodic Chart you have lithium sodium pottassium and then potassium swings over to calcium strontium and barium so if you look at your periodic table you'll find they form a nice little Tetris piece for you here lithium sodium potassium calcium strontium and barium now these strong bases do disassociate 100% an important note considering we just got a lot of time discussing polyprotic acids strong bases unlike polyprotic acids do produce two hydroxides these strong bases right here with two hydroxides do produce two hydroxides for example if I was to write the disassociation reaction for calcium hydroxide I place my calcium hydroxide in water and I get the calcium ion plus two hydroxides because I have two hydroxides there so be aware that when you place calcium hydroxide strontium hydroxide or berium hydroxide in water you are going to get two hydroxide units out all right let's look at some of the fun reactions of acids and bases all right let's talk about writing the the reaction between arous acids and arous bases they always follow a pattern the pattern always consists of the acid and the base forming water and a salt where does this come from well let's deal with the water first your acid is always giving up a hydrogen your base is always giving up a hydroxide that reaction of the hydrogen ion with the hydroxide produces a water so that's where our water comes from how about our salt well first of all a salt is just a fancy way of saying an ionic compound whenever we're not talking table salt here obviously although table salt is an example of a salt and a ionic compound a salt is just a generic way or a fancy way of talking about an ionic compound we've already mentioned that when the hydrogen leaves the acid it leaves behind an annion it leaves behind an anion so our hydropic acid leaves behind the anion fluoride whenever a base reacts it leaves behind a cation well whenever you have a cation and an Antion you get a ionic compound which we refer to as a salt so that's where everything's coming from let's take a look at predictive chemistry here and let's write the reaction that you'd experience between sodium hydroxide and nitric acid first step's pretty easy you're just going to write the acids and the bases as reactants so I've got and it doesn't matter which one you write first and that's an AQ for aquous there by the way hopefully by now you realize that those unintelligible squiggles right there are aquous next thing you need to do is you need to identify the cation from the base you identify the cation from the base by whatever is not part of the so whatever not whatever isn't part of the hydroxide is part of the cation so our cation is going to be sodium which we know has A+ one charge identify the anion from the base we looked at doing that last earlier today so we remove that hydrogen at the negative sign so we've got nitrate and we have sodium make a salt from the cation of the annion sodium is+ one nitrate negative 1 so it'll be a 1:1 ratio cation always goes first remember so we'd have sodium nitrate now we're going to write the water and the salt so we're going to write water and water is going to be in the liquid phase not the aquous phase that's a lower that's a lowercase letter L there right water's in the liquid phase and we'd have sodium nitrate in the aquous phase there's a three there and that's all there is to it now let's have you try one oh whoops got ahead of myself here before you try one let's do one more here this is going to be a little bit different than normal we're dealing with a polyprotic acid here you have to form one water for every acidic hydrogen you have or one water for every hydroxide you you have in this case we have a polyprotic acid so we're going to have two hydrogens to deal with so our process is going to stay the same we're going to write our base and we're going to write our acid we're going to identify our cadion sodium we're identify our base our base we're going to remove both Pro proton so if we're removing two protons we're left with the carbonate ion right we have h23 I'm removing two hydrogen so I'm leaving two electrons abandoned to form a salt from these two I'm going to need two sodiums to counteract the Nega -2 charge on my carbonate so my salt would be na2 CO3 let your nomencl rules in your charge dictate your salt right I didn't look at my equation say I have one sodium and one carbonate no I said I've got a Nega -2 charge on my carbonate so I need two sodiums to balance it out then I have water I have two hydrogens I'm moving so I'm forming two waters and my water is of course in the liquid phase then I have two sodiums in my equation so I need to balance by placing a two in front of my hydroxide that also gives me two hydroxides to react with my two hydrogens and everything's balanced now let's have you try one pause me and try this on your own all right hopefully you paused me here and you're saying really stretch this thing out more we've been listening to you for close to two hours now I know aren't you lucky um at any rate write your acid and your base I've got calcium hydroxide and I have whoops aquous and I have hydrogen bromide aquous I know I'm going to form water how many Waters am I going to form well I have two hydroxides here right so that means in My overall equation I'm going to wind up forming two hydrogen two water molecules pardon me I need to form my salt so I'm going to identify my cation calcium 2+ my anion's going to be bromide I'm going to need two bromines to counterbalance the charge on my Cal calcium so my salt would wind up being calcium bromide and that's going to be aquous um check to see if I'm balanced oh hey I need two hydrogen I need two bro hydr bromic acid molecules to balance out my bromines and to provide enough hydrogen to form my water molecules and there you are beep all right let's now take a look at the Rel let's now view acid base reactions through the lens of ionic equations to write the ionic equation for strong acid reactions we treat it just like we would a precipitation reaction so step one we're we're going to write our ions all your strong bases are ionic compounds so we know that they disassociate completely strong acids also disassociate completely here's where the difference occurs what happens when an acid disassociates does it form the hydrogen ion no it forms the hydronium ion and the iodide ion then I'm don't I'm not going to crowd things we write our products we have water is water an ionic compound no water is not an ionic compound water is a Cove valent compound not only that but it's in the liquid form so we don't break water up water stays together as a liquid we have sodium iodide so sodium iodide is going to break up because it's an ionic compound and it's aquous so there's our ionic compound now I mean our there's our ionic equation and if we look at that ionic equation what do we notice we notice we have a couple spectator ions there right right sodium appears the sodium ion appears as a reactant and it appears the exact same way as a product same for the iodide ion so we can cross those out and when we do we're left with a net ionic equation and our net ionic equation tells us that hydroxide ion plus the hydronium ion yields water and we need to balance there we go so there's our net ionic equation for any strong acid or strong base for any strong acid strong base reaction the net ionic equation will always be that for any strong acid strong base reaction the net ionic equation will always be hydroxide plus hydronium yields two water molecules you should write that down and make a note of it just like you should write down apocalypse a p o c a l y PS e write down apocalypse and just in case you had trouble with my screen Chicken Scratch there and just in case you had trouble with my chicken scratch for strong acids strong bases the net ionic equation is always going to be the hydronium ion plus the hydroxide ion equals water or if you don't want to view it from the standpoint of hydronium the hydrogen ion plus hydroxide ion yelds water that's always the nonionic equation for strong acid strong base what about weak acids and weak bases weak acids do not disassociate completely in water therefore when you're writing an ionic equation you don't break them up let's take a look at an example write the ionic equation for the reaction of hydrochloric acid and potassium Hy hydroxide when writing an ionic equation your first step is to break aquous ionic compounds and strong acids into their ions you never break anything else apart all right so we're looking at figuring out the ionic equation for the reaction between hydrochloric acid and potassium hydroxide we know that because you're reacting an acid and a base you're going to get water as one of your products the other product is going to be you have the potassium ion and the fluoride ion one: one and it contains a group 1 a annion a group 1 A cation so it's going to be soluble in water so we're going to break up aquous ionic comp compounds the first compound we come to is hydrochloric acid is hydrochloric acid a strong acid no it's a weak acid is an ionic compound no therefore we don't break it up then we come to potassium hydroxide potassium hydroxide is an the ionic compound it's got a metal as the first element yes so we break it up our products we have water water is a coent compound so it stays together then we have potassium fluoride it's aquous so it gets broken up balanced everything's balanced so there's our ion I equation if we wanted to do a net ionic equation who's our only spectator if you look we only have one spectator ion in this reaction the only thing that appears the same on both sides of the equation is the potassium ion so our net ionic equation really wouldn't look that different than our ionic equation and that would be our net ionic equation right there I will tell you right now this is a favorite test Bank question test Banks love love doing this sort of thing they love asking you these weak acids make sure that you never split up a weak acid in an ionic equation weak acids are written together like that now let's have you try one pause me all right my wife just commented that she really wish she had that ability but at any rate um you're asked to write the ionic equation for the reaction between acetic acid and calcium hydroxide first thing you need to do is you need to write the equation itself I write the molecular equation first so you have acetic acid why did I give myself a CTIC acid right with the stylus your products are going to be two waters because you have a two hydroxides and you've got calcium with a 2+ acetate with a negative 1 so you're going to need two acetates to counteract the [Music] calcium and anything with acetates aquous and to balance you're going to need two of them all right so there's our molecular equation now we're writing the ionic equation you break up ionic compounds and strong acids only acetic acid isn't a strong acid so we keep a atic acid together calcium hydroxide is an ionic compound because it starts with a metal calcium so you do break it up don't go inventing polyatomic ions you have two hydroxides not some new polyatomic onon you're tempted to make up all right now we go to the other side of the arrow we have water water doesn't get broken up cal um calcium acetate however is an ionic compound and it's soluble so it does get broken up and that's the aquous sign that there I'm scrib I'm scribbling into the margins um so there's your ionic equation I balanced as we went along your weak acids Stay Together weak acids Stay Together bases because arenus bases or ionic compounds get split up so there's your ionic equation if we were wanting to do the net equation who's our only spectator calcium is the only spectator so if we were to write the net ionic equation the net ionic equation would be by by calcium would be or the balancing here is going to be a little bit fun look at our balancing when we write that net ionic equation look at the net ionic equation we've got twos in front of everything what would your math teacher tell you to do get rid of the twos and she'd be absolutely right so we actually need to get rid of all those twos there when it comes to writing the net ionic equation so your net ionic would simply be acetic acid aquous plus hydroxide aquous yields water Liquid Plus the acetate ion and I hate styluses um I don't want to raise a stor about it but you should write down storm s t o r m storm another example just to make sure the horse is completely dead write the net ionic equation for the reaction of hydrocyanic acid and lithium hydroxide go all right hopefully you paused me and worked it out on your own once again you're starting by writing the molecular equation for it we've got hydrocyanic acid and I know all the other times I've written the base first it doesn't matter which one goes first one of my products is always water then I have lithium plus one cyanide plus one a negative 1 so it' be lithium cyanide aquous we know it's aquous because lithium's in group one and anything with a um group one a elements aquous so to write the ionic equation we keep our weak acid together we break apart our base because it's an ionic compound water stays together our ionic compound breaks up so there's our ionic equation who's our spectator ion lithium lithium appears the same on both sides of the equation so bye-bye lithium and that gives us a net ionic equation which which is what the problem was asking for of cyanide plus hydroxide aquous yields H2O Liquid Plus the cyanide ion that's an N there people say my n's look like W's there we go aquous so there's your net ionic equation here's another one let's see if I can trick you I'm pausing letting you try it on your own all right are you back before you do anything I hope you realize that nitric acid is one of your strong acids lithium hydroxide is a strong base and whenever you have a strong acid reacting with a strong base your net ionic equation is always the reaction of hydronium and hydroxide to yield liquid water boom nailed it seriously watch out for these type of questions when you do deal with standardized test banks in particular um they're trying to get you to waste time um by doing it the hard way instead of recognizing you have strong acid strong base