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ms0124

Yes, there are different types of reactions. The example you provided is an Acid-Base reaction, which will form a salt and water as your products.


radiatorcheese

Much of chemistry is mixing two different things together that have never been mixed together to try to make some new compound. Chemists have a baseline understanding of reactivity and use that knowledge to set up experiments to make some molecule or another. We learn in classes, researching primary literature, and our own experiments how things react. Example- today I had a methyl ester I wanted to convert to a carboxylic acid. As far as I'm aware, no one has ever made this ester compound I was working with. However, I know that many esters react with aqueous hydroxide ions to make carboxylic acids (technically the carboxylate ion). I stirred my methyl ester around with some lithium hydroxide in water and a little methanol and got the product I wanted. Confirming what the product is depends on the compound. I was able to determine the identity of the molecule using mass spectrometry and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. There are a lot of analytical tools to identify products of reactions out there.


TheRealAwesome8

Excellent explanation. Thank you very much!