Why is acetic, carbonic,citrus……acids less concentrated than HCL or Sulphuric acid?
You’re confusing acid concentration with acid strength. If you were to add 0.1 mol of any acid to 1L of water, the concentration would be 0.1mol/L regardless of which acid you added. However, at the same concentration, acids like HCL, H2SO4 and HF are all much stronger acids then ones such as acetic acid. The reason for this is that the strong acids ionize much more completely in solution. A strong acid often ionizes >99%, while a weak acid may ionize less than <50%. Ionization is the separation of a ionic compound in solution into its ions, for example: HCl(aq) --> H+(aq) + Cl-(aq) Thus, even at the same concentration, a strong acid will provide more H+ ions than a weak acid will, and have a lower pH. As far as polyprotic acids (ones that have the potential to donate more than one H+ ion to the solution), the first H+ will always ionize much more readily than the second, third, etc. Therefore, they can still be a weaker acid than HCl or HF.
