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Old 17-04-2012, 12:06 PM
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AstralTraveller (David)
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Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Wollongong
Posts: 3,820
Can I be a pedant??

Sorry folks but I'm about to be a pain-in-the-butt pedant. The measure of acidity that everyone refers to is correctly written 'pH' and, as a chemist, Ph, ph etc give me the heeby jeebies. The 'p' means "negative of the log base 10 of the activity of.." which is pretty close to "negative of the log base 10 of the concentration of.." and the 'H' stands for hydrogen. So the term is "the negative of the log base 10 of the hydrogen ion concentration". Similarly you can have pOH for hydroxide concentration or pCl for chloride. You can even have pKa which is the negative log of the disassociation constant of a weak acid and a few others that escape me at the moment. I'm similarly distressed by KM for km (KM = kelvin mega whereas km = kilo metre) etc.

Phew, I feel better with that off my chest. Now back to dying plants.
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