Please complete the quiz below for tomorrow, Tuesday, March 15th, 2011. All "highly" charged (+2 or >) metal ions in an aqueous solution are acidic in nature. This is due to the metal being able to hybridize its outer orbitals (sp^3; sp^3d; sp^3d^2) and act as a Lewis Acid (electron pair acceptor). The waters are good Lewis Bases (electon pair donors) with the two non-bonding electron pairs attached to the oxygen of the water molecule. The highly charged metal ion will cause the shared electron between oxygen and hydrogen to be much closer to the oxygen, thus making the ability of a hydrogen to leave the complex ion much better.
The complex ion in the question, hexaaqua aluminum ion, would be octahedral in shape with six ligands (waters) surrounding the central aluminum ion. The hybridization of the aluminum ion would be sp^3d^2. The question asks that you write a dissociation reaction for the I.C.E table, so make sure to show Al(H2O)6^+3 losing a proton and show the resulting conjugate base.
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