What is "orthophosphoric acid"?

1 Answer
anor277
Aug 5, 2017

You've had this question out for over a year..........and.........

Explanation:

..........and you might as well ask why the molecular formula of methane is CH_4, or the molecular formula of sodium chloride is NaCl.

H_3PO_4, "phosphoric acid", in the old literature "orthophosphoric acid", is a fairly weak mineral acid, known to form equilibrium quantities of H_2PO_4^(-) and HPO_4^(2-) in aqueous solution. The third dissociation to give PO_4^(3-) can usually be ignored in aqueous solution.

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