OK, in the interest of fighting ignorance and all…
Let me confess the huge void in my knowledge of the world: chemistry. Want to know my entire knowledge of the subject? There are acids and bases. pH is how they’re measured. 0 is acid, 14 is base, 7 is neutral. That’s it, folks, and I’m not even sure that I nailed that. :o
So, what I ask of you, clever science type persons, is a source of good, basic chemistry knowledge. Books? Websites? what ever. I’m not looking to become a chemical engineer or anything, I just want to be able to give a critical look at various claims (like product sales pitches) and determine if (and why) they’re BS or not.
Any help in this endeavour would be so appreciated!
I dont know what you want exactly. And basic chemistry book will help you, however in a basic chemistry course a 25 chapter book is usually used and only about 11 chapters are covered in class.
Are you trying to figure out things like oxyclean? That is not really basic chemistry, that is more along the lines of biochemistry and some cleaners use enzymes to break down organic molecules.
also, with pH the grading is exponential. pH is due to Hydrogen ions (aka protons wthout electrons) and each scale is 10x as acidic or basic as the last.
For example, if 3 pH had 100,000 hydrogen ions per square inch, then 4 pH would have 10000 hydrogen ions, and 2 pH would have 1,000,000 hydrogen ions.