Question: This is my question about chlorine, how can the same stuff be in acid and salt?

Sarah Thomas answered on 25 Mar 2011:

Thats a great chlorine question!! The answer is about ions! Chlorine is really really good at being an ion. It can be an ion in acid where it’s main job is the formation of free H+ ions to make the pH go down, it’s really good at this because it is a stable ion. Also it’s labile, this means it’s good at reacting and floating around on it’s own. Salt is an ionic compund too, it has postive and negative ions. Chlorine is good at being a salt with sodium atoms, lithium, magnesium and lots of other metals. It’s small and has a strong negative charge and metals ions really like chlorine because of this!