Question

Does carboxylic acid react with sodium metal?

Answer 1

Hint :Carboxylic acid and alcohol both react with metal to give different salts and hydrogen, but carboxylic acid reacts with metal faster than alcohol. Carboxylic acid reacts with many metals to give their respective salts and releases hydrogen.

Complete Step By Step Answer:
The correct answer to this question is yes, carboxylic acid does react with sodium metal. The products that are obtained by such reactions are the salt of sodium metal and hydrogen.
Carboxylic acid reacts with many metals to give out their respective salts as products. Hydrogen is released every time carboxylic acid reacts with a metal.
Any carboxylic acid can react with sodium metal to give their respective salt and hydrogen, but let us take an example of reaction of acetic acid reacting with sodium metal.
The chemical formula of acetic acid is $C{H}_{3}COOH$ , and that for sodium is $Na$ . The complete reaction is given below.
  $2C{H}_{3}COOH+2Na\stackrel{}{\to }2C{H}_{3}COONa+H_2$
Here the salt of sodium formed is called sodium acetate. TO balance the reaction, 2 molecules of acetic acid react with 2 atoms of sodium and give 2 molecules of sodium acetate and one molecule of dihydrogen.
In this way, any carboxylic acid can react with sodium to give respective salt and hydrogen.

Note :
Carboxylic acid also gives salt when subjected to reaction with metal carbonates. For example, when acetic acid is subjected to reaction with sodium carbonate, the products formed will be sodium acetate, carbon dioxide and water. The salt formed will be same as that formed in reaction of acetic acid with simple metal. The only difference here will be the by-products obtained will be carbon dioxide and water in place of hydrogen.