Organic Chemistry/Acid Bases - Regarding ranking from acidic to basic.?

Question

I'm so confused.. I have little bacground in anything regarding acids and bases in the form of finding their "level."

I've found the equation:
HA + H20 <=> H30 + A-

And I have the following to rank from acidic to basic:
Methanol (CH3OH)
Methanoic acid (CHOH)
Methanamine (CH3NH2)
Methanal (CH2O)

I've read books, looked at websites, for at least 1.5 hours.. I still don't get it.

I have them all drawn out, labled, chemical formulas.. but what do I do now?

Thanks.

Whoops, I wrote one of them wrong.

Methanoic Acid is CH2O2

So how would you find the KB and KA values of the one part. Do you take away the CH's (CH, CH2, CH3, etc) and see what you have left?

Answer 1

You would do well to know what you expect to do before you start doing it. The main "key" to ranking these compounds is to look for Ka or Kb values in acid or base source material. Substances that have Ka values are acids. The higher the Ka value, the stronger is the acid. The opposite is true for the bases.

As for your compounds, methylamine is a weak base (a first cousin to ammonia). As for methanoic acid and methanal, I think you have the same compound twice, what we called formaldehyde in the good old days before the IUPAC police and no prayer in school.

Answer 2

as a results of fact those compounds at the instant are not in a collection which you will with no complication relate to, I propose finding up the pKa values. From that the order is H3O+ (-a million.7), HN3 (4.6), HONH3+ (5.ninety seven), CH3SH (10.4), CH3OH (15.5). All pKa values from Wikipedia. i may be careful approximately utilising electronegativity in predicting acidity because it demands some absurd predictions, which includes HF is ionic, yet would not ionize on a similar time as hi is covalent, yet thoroughly ionizes. the greater beneficial the nuclear cost, the greater electrons are drawn to it works for me.