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5 Reactivity
What is a salt?
When you think about salt, you probably think of the salt you put in your food as flavouring.
This is sodium chloride. You have met other salts during your science course: copper
sulfate, silver nitrate and calcium carbonate, for example.
Many salts have important uses in everyday life. The photographs show some examples.
Sodium chloride salt is used to preserve food and, as table salt, to flavour food.
Gymnasts use the salt magnesium carbonate to keep their hands dry so that they do not slip
on the apparatus.
Calcium sulfate is a salt that is used to make blackboard chalk.
Aluminium sulfate is added to dyes to help them stick to fibres.
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These soya seeds are coated with copper sulfate. It stops fungi growing on the seeds when
they are planted.
Ammonium nitrate is used as a fertiliser to help crops to grow well.
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Acids and salts
Every day, the chemical industry makes hundreds of thousands of tonnes of different salts.
Many of the methods for making salts start with acids.
All acids contain hydrogen. The table below gives you the formula of the three common
acids you find in the laboratory.
The table also shows some examples of the salts that can be formed from these acids.
Two other acids you may meet are carbonic acid and citric acid.
Carbonic acid is a weak acid that is formed when carbon dioxide reacts with water. Salts
made from carbonic acid are called carbonates.
Citric acid is found in fruits, such as oranges and lemons. Salts formed using citric acid are
called citrates.
Name of acid Formula Salts formed from the acid Example of salt Formula of
salt
hydrochloric acid HCl chlorides sodium chloride NaCl
sulfuric acid H₂SO₄ sulfates copper sulfate CuSO₄
nitric acid HNO₃ nitrates potassium nitrate KNO₃
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Making salts using a metal and an acid
You have reacted metals with dilute acids before. It is often a good way to make salts.
The general equation for the reaction of metals with acid is:
acid + metal → salt + hydrogen
The word and symbol equations for the reaction between zinc and hydrochloric acid are:
zinc + hydrochloric acid → zinc chloride + hydrogen
Zn + 2HCl → ZnCl₂ + H₂
(image caption)
Zinc reacting with hydrochloric acid
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Making salts using a metal oxide
Some metals will not react with acids to make salts. For example, silver and copper are too
unreactive to displace hydrogen from an acid, so we have to find another way of making
salts from unreactive metals. We can do this by starting with a metal oxide.
The general equation for this reaction is:
metal oxide + acid → salt + water
In this example we can make copper sulfate by heating copper oxide with sulfuric acid. The
word and symbol equations for this reaction are:
copper oxide + sulfuric acid → copper sulfate + water
CuO + H₂SO₄ → CuSO₄ + H₂O
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Metal carbonates and acids
Carbonates – such as calcium carbonate – are salts. Carbonates can be formed by the
reaction of a metal with carbonic acid.
We can use carbonates to form other salts by reacting them with an acid.
For example:
sulfuric acid + calcium carbonate → calcium sulfate + water + carbon dioxide
H₂SO₄ + CaCO₃ → CaSO₄ + H₂O + CO₂
hydrochloric acid + calcium carbonate → calcium chloride + water + carbon
dioxide
2HCl + CaCO₃ → CaCl₂ + H₂O + CO₂
acid + carbonate → salt + water + carbon dioxide
The line above shows the general equation for these reactions.
The rock limestone is made of calcium carbonate. It is damaged when it reacts with acid rain
and erodes.
The skeletons of coral are made from calcium carbonate and react with acids. This happens
when the oceans become slightly more acidic as more carbon dioxide dissolves in the water.
(image caption)
This piece of coral is reacting in hydrochloric acid. How can you tell that a reaction is taking
place?
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Salts in rocks
The blue-green colours in these rocks in the Atacama Desert in Chile tell you that they
contain copper salts. This bright blue-green mineral in the rock is called malachite. It is made
from copper carbonate.
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Forming salts by neutralisation
Alkalis react with acids to neutralise them. When an acid is neutralised by an alkali, a salt is
produced.
For example, when sodium hydroxide reacts with hydrochloric acid, the salt sodium chloride
is formed. The other product is water.
sodium hydroxide + hydrochloric acid → sodium chloride + water
NaOH + HCl → NaCl + H₂O
The general equation for neutralisation reactions is:
acid + alkali → salt + water
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Alkalis and bases
When a metal oxide dissolves in water, it forms an alkaline solution.
Metal oxides are called bases. Soluble metal bases form alkalis when they dissolve in water.
For example:
sodium oxide + water → sodium hydroxide
Sodium oxide is a base. The sodium hydroxide is an alkali.
Some metal oxides are not soluble in water, for example iron and copper oxide. So they do
not form alkalis. But they can still react with acids to form salts.
copper oxide + sulfuric acid → copper sulfate + water
CuO + H₂SO₄ → CuSO₄ + H₂O
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