ABSTRACT
It can be reasonably argued that most of the reactions encountered in this book involve acidbase chemistry in one form or another. Indeed, generic acid-base reactions, and the factors that drive the acid-base equilibrium have been referred to several times. In Chapter 5, the carboxyl group is the key unit in carboxylic acids, which are taken as the prototypical organic acid. For the most part, carboxylic acids (RCO2H) are weaker than the mineral acids encountered in general chemistry (HCl, H2SO4, HNO3, etc.). It is important to modify views of acids to include very weak acids, as suggested in Chapter 2. Including very weak acids means that the functional groups introduced in Chapter 5 must be considered, including alcohols, ketones, terminal alkynes, and even primary and secondary amines. Most of these functional groups react as weak acids only in the presence of a powerful base. It is also possible that a weak base will react with a very strong acid, generating the corresponding conjugate acid.
