Question

What are the products of a reaction between an acid and a base?

Answer 1

Answer:

When you have a base, which is reacting with an acid, the products are water and a salt, which is composed by the anion and the cation from the compounds, mentioned before.

Explanation:

Let's see this example.

HCl + NaOH → NaCl + H₂O

The reaction of an acid and a base is called neutralization, where you make water.

The thing is that this reactions are not energetically favorable. In this case, chloride and sodium are weak conjugated base and acid, therefore they do not react in water, to form the corresponding acid and base.

Na⁺  +  H₂O ← NaOH + H₃O⁺

Cl⁻ +  H₂O ← HCl + OH⁻