Equivalents and Normality

Introduction to Equivalents

At some point, you will need to express the concentration of cations and anions rather than the concentration of a compound in solution. For example you may need to know the concentration of Sodium ions in a solution of Sodium Chloride.

The modern way to express the concentration of ions in solution is to use molarity and millimolarity but concentration used to be expressed in terms of equivalents and milliequivalents. These expressions are still occasionally used and you therefore need to know what they mean.

In the following screens, you will first look at equivalents and milliequivalents, and then you will look at equivalence and Normality.