When it comes to terms in chemistry, what does “pH” stand for?
potential of hydrogen
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pH is calculated as the power (base10) of H+ concentration so in my chemistry education we used the term “power” of hydrogen
pH represents the negative of the base-10 logarithm of the concentration of hydrogen ions. The “p” itself, though, is thought not to have represented any word in particular in the original source material (which, for instance, also used “q” in a similar fashion). In the years since its origin, people have back-applied meanings like “power” and “potential”.
Wikipedia:
Sørensen did not explain why he used the letter p, and the exact meaning of the letter is still disputed.[6] Sørensen described a way of measuring pH using potential differences, and it represents the negative power of 10 in the concentration of hydrogen ions. The letter p could stand for the French puissance, German Potenz, or Danish potens, all meaning “power”, or it could mean “potential”. All of these words start with the letter p in French, German, and Danish, which were the languages in which Sørensen published: Carlsberg Laboratory was French-speaking; German was the dominant language of scientific publishing; Sørensen was Danish. He also used the letter q in much the same way elsewhere in the paper, and he might have arbitrarily labelled the test solution “p” and the reference solution “q”; these letters are often paired.[7] Some literature sources suggest that “pH” stands for the Latin term pondus hydrogenii (quantity of hydrogen) or potentia hydrogenii (power of hydrogen), although this is not supported by Sørensen’s writings.[8][9][10]
In modern chemistry, the p stands for “the negative decimal logarithm of”, and is used in the term pKa for acid dissociation constants,[11] so pH is “the negative decimal logarithm of H+ ion concentration”, while pOH is “the negative decimal logarithm of OH- ion concentration”.
I always figured it was “proportion”, because it’s a (representation of a) ratio.
I was taught power of hydronium.
I was taught the p stood for ‘puissance’ (and the H for ‘hydrogen’). My freshman chemistry professor was quite definitive about that. He even said “too many fools think the p stands for ‘power’. But it stands for ‘puissance’, which is french for power”. Thanks, Dr. Robinson!
Side-bar: “Puissance du Canada” was the French version of “Dominion of Canada”.
FWIW in German 9th grade chemistry class we got told it was potentia hydrogenii.
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