Using AACT Resources to Teach Acid Base Titrations

I’m not sure where you are with your class this week, but this time of year I would be teaching acid-base titrations. This topic is covered by several learning objectives in the AP Chemistry Curriculum Framework scattered across Big Ideas 1, 3, and 6. Luckily, AACT has several classroom resources to help your students meet those objectives.

The following AACT resources will help your students meet learning objective 1.20: The student can design, and/or interpret data from, an experiment that uses titration to determine the concentration of an analyte in a solution.

• In the Lethal Dose lab students perform several titrations to calculate the concentrations of potentially “lethal” medicycloprophic acid
• Students will determine if the concentration of acetic acid in vinegar is close to that stated on the bottle by titrating vinegar with NaOH in our Vinegar Quality Control lab.

These resources will help your students meet learning objective 6.12: The student can reason about the distinction between strong and weak acid solutions with similar values of pH, including the percent ionization of the acids, the concentrations needed to achieve the same pH, and the amount of base needed to reach the equivalence point in a titration.

• In the AACT Titration lab, students learn the difference between strong, weak, and concentrated acids by carrying out titration with a strong base. Additionally, students are required to develop a set of procedures to test whether it takes more base to neutralize a strong or weak acid.
• Our Titration Lab with Kinetics combines two major concepts as students calculate the molarity of an unknown through titration, solving dilution calculations, and calculating reaction rates.

Finally, you can use the following resource to help students meet learning objective 6.13: The student can interpret titration data for monoprotic or polyprotic acids involving titration of a weak or strong acid by a strong base (or a weak or strong base by a strong acid) to determine the concentration of the titrant and the pKa for a weak acid, or the pKb for a weak base.

• Tie acid-base concepts to common household products with our Calculating Acid in Lemon-Lime Soda lab. Students investigate the molarity of citric acid in a clear, lemon-lime soft drink through titration with NaOH and an indicator.

One more learning objective connected with titrations is 3.9: The student is able to design and/or interpret the results of an experiment involving a redox titration.

AACT does not currently have resources on this topic but we are working hard to expand our library of classroom resources for AP Chemistry teachers. Do you have a great AP demonstration, activity, or lesson about redox titrations that you would like to share with the community? We are proud to feature teacher-submitted activities in the classroom resource collection. If you want to share something you use in your classroom with the community, please send it along for consideration.