What is the difference between polar protic solvents and polar aprotic solvents?

Question

I know they are very similar but what is the difference?

Answer 1

Polar aprotic lack exchangeable protons. Examples are acetonitrile and acetone.

Polar protic are H2O...

Answer 2

The adjective "polar" refers to the fact that a molecule (in this case of a solvent) has an electrical "polarity", which means it has one side that is more positively charged than the opposite one. For example, if you take...water: the molecule is not symmetric - on one side you have the hydrogen atoms and on the other the oxygen atom. When those atoms are together to form the water molecule, electrons are more biased toward the oxygen atom side, leaving the hydrogen atoms somewhat positively charged. It is not an ionic bond but you can see how hydrogen tends to positively charge similarly to that, even if less. On the contrary, oxygen tends to take a bit more of the negative electron charge. So the water molecule is a "polar" one because it has somewhat of an electrical dipole, positive at one end, negative at the other one. Similarly alcohols are polar, with their non-symmetric molecules. An example of a non-polar solvent instead is benzene. It is a perfectly symmetric ring, so it is very easy to understadn: how could it be polar anywhere? No side of its molecule is different than any other side, and the molecule is perfecly un-biased and not polar. Hope it helps.

Answer 3

a protic solution is likely to give off a hydrogen ion, where as aprotic solution is not likely to give off a hydrogen ion. aprotic solvents lack the acidic hydrogen group.