Abstract

The acid ionization constant, Ka, is a quantitative measure of the strength of an acid a
solution and commonly expressed in units of mol/L. For reference, there are table of Ka
values for weak acids to identify the acid based on the value of Ka and pKa.

This experiment examined is to determine the value of Ka and identify unknown acid
solution. To obtain an unknown weak acid, 15mL of 0.1M unknown acid solution diluted with
90mL of distilled water. Titration was done by adding 1mL by 1mL of NaOH to the diluted
unknown acid to achieve standardized of NaOH solution. The experiment was repeated
three times to achieve accurate and precise graph from the recorded data.

The equivalence point can be found on the graph plotted which is pH versus volume of
sodium hydroxide, NaOH. By plotting the titration curve, we managed to find the equivalence
point and half-equivalence point that give the volume of NaOH and pH value . The
equivalence point of the graph is 19.69 mL with 8.53 corresponding pH. The half-
equivalence point of the graph is 9.845 mL with 5.2 corresponding pH. The pH value of the
half-equivalence point is used as pKa and lastly to calculate the Ka.

2 methods of calculation have been applied to calculate the value for Ka. The first
method is by using graph whereas the second is by using the initial pH of the unknown acid
solution. The value of Ka for the first is 6.3096 x 10-6 whereas for the second method is
2.453 x 10-8. The unknown acid solution had been identified as pyridine with theoretical
value Ka of 5.90x10-6.

The percentage error is calculated for determining the precision of your calculations.
For the first and the second method, the percentage error is 6.9424% and 99.2792%.
Therefore, the value of Ka by using the first method is more accurate than method B due to
lower percentage error.