Question:
Arrange water, ethanol and phenol in increasing order of acidity and give a reason for your answer.
Solution:
Increasing order of acidity is: Ethanol < water < phenol
Phenol is more acidic because it forms phenoxide ion after deprotonation and gets stabilized by resonance. Ethanol is less acidic because the ethoxide ion is stabilized by the positive inductive effect. The electron releasing group in ethanol increases the density on oxygen and deprotonation gets difficult to occur. Water is a good proton donor than ethanol.
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