Hello - I have been taking online courses on chemistry purely out of curiosity. I am having a hard time understanding how acids work on a very fundamental level.
I understand the PH scale, titration equations, how acids and bases behave on a molecular level.
So lets say I have HCl in an aqueous solution. From what I understand the hydrogen breaks off very easily from Chlorine, hence why it is a strong acid and basically you then have H3O+ hydronium ions floating around with Cl- ions. So the more hydrogen ions you have the stronger the acid. Why aren’t the Cl- ions essentially neutralizing the hydrogen ions overall since their the same opposite charge? What is exactly going on that is giving something acidic properties (sour taste, corrosive, etc)? What am I missing? I imagine whatever the answer is, the same is true of bases?
Thanks for any insight on this!
