Acids, Bases and Salts

Why everything tastes so differently? Why lemon is tangy and mango is sweet? This is because of different percentage of acids, bases, and salts in their chemical composition. Let’s learn how these can be characterized, understanding the concepts by Arrhenius, Bronsted-Lowry and Lewis etc.

Experimental Definitions

Earlier, acids, bases, and salts were characterized by the experimental testing of their aqueous solutions. An acid is defined as a substance whose water solution tastes sour, turns blue litmus red and neutralizes bases.  A substance is called base if its aqueous solution tastes bitter, turns red litmus blue or neutralizes acids.

Salt is a neutral substance whose aqueous solution does not affect litmus. According to Faraday: acids, bases, and salts are termed as electrolytes. Further, Liebig proposed that acids are compounds which contain hydrogen that can be replaced by metals.