How can you tell if something is highly concentrated or lowly concentrated?

For example: H2CO3, H+, HCO3-, CO3(2- charge), is in order of highest concentration to lowest concentration, can you explain why it is that order? Thanks for your help :)

1 answer

You're really asking about two or three things at once. One is concentration and the other is ionization of weak and strong acids/bass.

First concentration. When we say an acid or base is strong we mean it ionizes 100%. A weak acid or a weak base ionizes less than 100%. Weak and strong in this sense has nothing to do with how fast it reacts, how much it eats into our skin, or anything like that. It's strictly if it ionizes 100% or less than 100%.

The acid or base STRENGTH is measured in molarity or some such concentration term. In that sense, a 0.2M solution is stronger than a 0.1M solution. Actually we should say that a 0.2M solution is more concentrated than a 0.1M solution. That keeps the word "stronger or weaker" out of the sentence and is often the confusing part to the student.

For weak acids, and H2CO3 is a weak acid, the ionization of a 0.05M solution is less than 1%. That means that H2CO3 ==> H^+ + HCO3^-.
So a 0.05M solution of H2CO3 has only about 2E-4M for H^+ and about the same for HCO3^- and the predominant specie remains with H2CO3 which is about 0.05 - 2E-4 = about 0.05. If you want CO3^2- (from HCO3^- ==>H^+ + CO3^2-) it is approximately 5E-11. This is true for all weak acids/weak bases; i.e., the ionized part USUALLY is small and the unionized part is the larger part.
I hope this answers your question. If not repost and explain what you don't understand and I'll take another crack at it.