Question

What are neutral substances? Explain with examples.

Answer 1

Hint: The substances are categorized into three classes namely- Acids, bases and neutral substances. Neutral substance is the one that neither exhibits acidic properties nor basic. Such a type of substance has equal no. of hydrogen and hydroxyl ions. Due to the neutrality state these substances do not show changes in the indicators.

Complete step by step answer:
- Neutral substances are neither acidic nor basic. An acid has the hydrogen ions and the base has the hydroxyl ions so on this basis neutral substances have equal no. of these ions. The most common example of neutral substance is water. Water does not have acidic or basic properties. We can check for acidic and basic behavior using pH scale. It determines the power or potential of hydrogen, basically the concentration of hydrogen ions in the solution. It has a scale ranging from 0-14; pH is less than 7 for acidic substances and greater than 7 for basic substances and 7 for neutral substances. When measured with this scale, water has a pH of 7 which indicates that it is a neutral substance.
- Another example of neutral substance is table salt. Table salt is basically sodium chloride i.e. NaCl. It is obtained from the neutralization reaction of strong acid and strong base. The strong acid used is hydrochloric acid and the strong base is sodium hydroxide. The neutralization reaction of strong acids with strong bases always yields neutral salt and water. So, table salt is a neutral salt.
The reaction is as follows- $HCl+NaOH\to NaCl+H2O$
- Sugar solution is yet another neutral substance. Pure sugar is neither acidic nor basic in nature. Litmus paper is an indicator used for testing acids and bases. It turns into red color on the action of acid and into blue on the action of base. Pure sugar does not have any effect on litmus paper, thus determining that it is a neutral substance.

Note:
One simply cannot tell whether the substance is acidic, basic or neutral just by looking at it. Acidic substances mostly taste sour but one can use indicators to test the nature of substances. There are many indicators available like litmus paper, phenolphthalein, methyl orange, etc. Different substances have different types of effects on indicators resulting in their identification. Neutral substances are quite useful in our day to day life.