Resumen de The Aqueous Proton Is Hydrated by More Than One Water Molecule: Is the Hydronium Ion a Useful Conceit?
For some time now, there has been disagreement concerning the best way to denote the aqueous proton in chemical equations. Recent results have shown that although the hydronium ion, H3O+ , may exist as a participant in some kinetic mechanisms, the thermodynamic ground-state structure for the hydrated proton is actually the hexahydrate, H+ ·(H2O)6, or H13O6 + . We report here a short history of this debate and a brief summary of the recent spectroscopic results. Finally, we argue that in the overwhelming majority of reactions studied in lower-division college and high school chemistry courses, it is preferable to use H+ (aq) rather than H3O+ (aq) to depict the hydrated proton.
