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Mistelle Hargrove

Is acetamide acid or base?

Charlie  Follow

No.

First, there is not really “ lemon acid” but the acid from lemons or citric acid.

And since it is clearly acid / acidic it can’t be a base at the same time.

Or was this just a bad translation ?

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Bill Thacker  Follow

CH3NH2 is a weak base. By the definition of a bronstead base, it is a proton acceptor, and by the definition of a Lewis base, it is a lone pair donor.

As a bronstead base it will accept a proton from a donor such as in the reaction below:

HCl + CH3NH2 ----> Cl- + CH3NH3+

As a Lewis Base it will look like this:

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Brian Day  Follow

Neither. It's a rather neutral organic compound.

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Alison Adams  Follow

Acetamide is a member of the class of acetamides that results from the formal condensation of acetic acid with ammonia. ... Acetamide is found in red beetroot. Acetamide (or acetic acid amide or ethanamide), CH3CONH2, the amide of acetic acid, is a white crystalline solid in pure form.

Acetamide has a higher pH reading than Acetone. Applying our basic information, pH less than 7 is acidic while pH more than 7 is basic. To conlude, Acetamide is a base while Acetone is an acid.

Acetamide is an organic compound with the formula CH3CONH2. It is the simplest amide derived from acetic acid. It finds some use as a plasticizer and as an industrial solvent. The related compound N,N-dimethylacetamide (DMA) is more widely used, but it is not prepared from acetamide.

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Dawn Leeper  Follow
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Craig Lenhard  Follow

Well, you got sodium acetate, the conjugate base of a WEAK ACID….and thus sodium acetate acts in water as a WEAK base…i.e. it would speciate in aqueous solution according to the equation…

[math]H_{3}C-C(=O)O^{-} + H_{2}O(l) ightleftharpoons H_{3}C-CO_{2}H(aq) + HO^{-}[/math]

And as a SOURCE of hydroxide ions, the acetate salt qualifies as a BASE….

Given starting concentrations of acetate ion, and [math]pK_{b}=14-pK_{a}=9.24[/math], we could solve for hydroxide anion quantitatively….

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Bryan P.  Follow

Ethanol dissociates in water to give an etoxide anion (C2H5O-) and protons (or hydronium). Since the etoxide anion is a strong conjugate base, that makes ethanol a weak acid.

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