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Chemical Reactions

Acids and Bases

What are Lewis acids and bases?

The definition of a species as a Lewis acid or a Lewis base is based on whether a species has a tendency to donate its electrons to another species or whether it tends to accept electrons from another species in a chemical reaction. Lewis acids are electron acceptors, while Lewis bases are electron donors. As you can probably guess, Lewis acids tend to react with Lewis bases, since they each have what the other one is looking for.