2 questions!

[ChemSiddiqui]

I was just wondering about the reaction of soft-acids and soft bases. Like generic acid/base reaction give a salt and water/neutral species, does soft acid and soft bases give a salt or they would give an adduct/complex?

 

Lets say that the soft base is NMe3 and soft acid is a diradical oxgen molecule. Is this similar to the reaction between ammonia and diradical oxygen which goes like this 4NH3 + 5O2 -------> 4NO + 6H2O?

 

Second question is more of a thought really. Why do we want to look for electrons when we look at an atom. I am asking this question as a quantum mechanics student. Does position or state of an electron give us all the information about a whole system? I am thinking that once we know which state the electron is in we can determine the reactivity of the system?

 

any help, thoughts or comments are appreciated.

[Horza2002]

With regards to question 1, i think the terms soft acid/base means they are weak; so when they are in solution they are predominatyl unionised. Only a small portion will actually be protonated/deprotonated.

 

With regards to question 2, chemists are interested in the electrons because they are what govern the chemical behaviour of the atom. The nucleus has very little to do with the bonding (except by determining the energy levels the orbitals are at). There might also be the fact that the electron orbitals make up about 99% of the volume of an atom...so its reasonably easy to find an atom