Talk:Equivalent (chemistry)

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Article Grading: The following comments were left by the quality and importance raters: (edit · refresh) The conversion table is definitely wrong! 1 equivalent is not equal to 0.5 mole for diprotic acids. The author confused equivalents with equivalent weight. This article should be corrected because it misleads students'

This article could be difficult for readers to understand without a background in chemistry. 69.140.157.138 09:58, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

This Article should have be the same as Equivalent_Weight

[edit] Definition is wrong?

Consider this sentence in the article: "Hence, the equivalent weight of a given substance is effectively equal to the amount of substance in moles, divided by the valence of the substance." This seems to me to give a unit completely different from the unit in the previous paragraph (number of grams that will react with a gram of hydrogen). Consider two elements each with valence 1 but one has very heavy atoms and one has light atoms. The number of moles of each will be the same. But the number of grams that will react with hydrogen will be quite different. Could someone who knows this topic please fix this so that the two definitions are actually equivalent, or else change the article to state clearly that the term can refer to quite different units? Or explain in simple language in the article itself why (I'm wrong and) the two are actually approximately equivalent? Thanks. --Coppertwig 17:12, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Definition corrected, article is different to equivalent weight

I have sorted out the incorrect definition and added a link to equivalent weight, which is related, but not the same. The formula is now consistent with the example conversion and hopefully now the article makes more sense.

I would suggest that this is kept a separate article to equivalent weight as the two are related but often used in different contexts so it would become more confusing to try to explain the two in one article. RobWB 10:38, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] I have a problem with the following definition of "equivalent"

The equivalent is formally defined as the mass in grams of a substance which will react with 6.022 x 1023 electrons.

To me, this definition looks more like "equivalent weight" than "equivalent" because it deals with mass. In the "conversion guide", there are examples of one equivalent being equal to one mole, half a mole, or one third of a mole. Mole is a number, not mass. For a divalent ion, is one equivalent equal to half a mole of the ion or half of the ion's atomic or molecular weight? To me, it is the former. The latter is called equavilent weight.

I suggest the following definition of equivalent.

An equivalent is defined as the number of moles of a substance which will react with one mole of electrons.

Ctchou 00:41, 23 March 2007 (UTC)