Why is methoxide strong base? In case of halogens, I get why one is weak base, and one is strong base, but in the case of ones with oxygen, this seems to be hard to figure out.
1 Answer
Methoxide ($\ce{CH3O-}$) is the conjugate base of methanol. Methanol is very weak acid (e.g. its dissociation constant is very small), so its conjugated base is very strong.
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$\begingroup$ Further reasoning can be that there is no delocalization for the free electron pair of oxygen because of the way the orbitals are oriented, so that makes it less stable. $\endgroup$– ZuboJul 14, 2016 at 14:37