Calculation of the species concentrations for a polyprotic acid is more complicated unless the pK values are separated by four or more, because three or more species may co-exist at a given pH . The example of citric acid is shown at the right.
12.
:What you'll find is that unless the desired pH is within about one pH unit of one of thee pKa's of one of the buffers ( ignoring the Bicarbonate buffering system gas-exchange issue ), you'll not get appreciable buffering-if A doesn't buffer by itself, and B doesn't buffer by itself, the A + B combination won't do anything special unless they interact somehow . ( And amino acids aren't special-treat them just like any other polyprotic acid )-- talk ) 04 : 36, 5 January 2013 ( UTC)
13.
But what you are requiring in terms of detail and introduction in the lead would require an article to be created, " Introduction to the Acid dissociation constant article . " It is logically inconsistant and a slipperly slope for Petergans to not be able to assume that ( and I'm pulling examples out of the FAC Nom comments ) readers will not know what a logarithm is, the structure of the atom ( Hydrogen ion = proton ), dissociation = splitting of a chemical compound into two or more parts ( all previous suggested by Vassyana ), definitions of exothermic and endothermic, that non-aqueous is defined and discussed later in the article ( and the lead does actually link to a later part of the article ), monoprotic versus polyprotic acids . . . . should we start including these in the lead of every chemistry article ? talk ) 07 : 15, 30 November 2008 ( UTC)
