my gut tells me its bc HCl is a strong acid, but im not suupppeerrrr sure
Pretty much that causes the problem.
I can't seem to get my head around this question. I've got a few trains of thoughts but I don't know which one it is that the question is looking for. For 1 mark, 'explain why a mixture of sodium chloride and hydrochloric acid cannot form a buffer solution'.
Whilst you have mixed an acid with its corresponding conjugate base (HCl and the chloride ion), there's a problem in that HCl fully ionises. The purpose of mixing an acid with its conjugate base is to create a system that
does not adjust significantly to small changes in pH (from adding small quantities of another acidic OR basic substance). Here, because HCl is a strong acid, the essentially inert chloride ion is not going to facilitate this - if you add more acid in there, the chloride ions are not going to go back into HCl.