Question

What is the pH of Sodium Chloride?

Answer 1

Part 1: pH

• The pH of any solution is defined as the negative log of Hydrogen ion concentration.
• Mathematically, $\mathrm{pH}=-{\log }_{10}\left[{\mathrm{H}}^{+}\right]$
• pH is used to determine the nature of the solution whether it is acidic, basic, or neutral.

Solution	pH range
Acidic	1 - 6.9
Neutral	7
Basic	7.1 - 14

Part 2: Identifying the pH of the Sodium chloride

• Sodium chloride is a normal salt that is formed by the complete neutralization of hydrochloric acid by sodium hydroxide.
• The neutralization reaction can be represented as:

$\underset{\mathrm{Hydrochloric}\mathrm{acid}}{\mathrm{HCl}\left(\mathrm{aq}\right)}+\underset{\mathrm{Sodium}\mathrm{hydroxide}}{\mathrm{NaOH}\left(\mathrm{aq}\right)}\to \underset{\mathrm{Sodium}\mathrm{chloride}}{\mathrm{NaCl}\left(\mathrm{s}\right)}+\underset{\mathrm{Water}}{{\mathrm{H}}_2\mathrm{O}\left(\mathrm{l}\right)}$

• Since the sodium chloride is formed by the complete neutralization reaction. Hence, sodium chloride is neutral.
• Hence, the pH of sodium chloride is 7.