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I'm an H⁺ denier, in that I refuse to consider loose protons to be real hydrogen, so I personally believe it stands for 'pretend'.
this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2024
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They told me at school that ‘p’ meant ‘negative log’. So ‘pH’ means ‘the negative log of the concentration of Hydrogen ions in moles/litre’.
pH 1 is 1 x 10^-1^ (strong acid)
pH 7 is 1 x 10^-7^ (neutral)
pH 14 is 1 x 10^-14^ (alkaline)
(Chemistry was a long time ago, though)
The xkcd breaks it down for us, basically we don't know because the person who coined the term never specified what it was. It's either: puissance, potens, or potenz. Which means potency in French, ~~Dutch~~ Danish and German, the three languages the scientists published in.
I was taught it meant 'potential' but that was 6th Grade in the US, so I guess it was all a lie.