Søren Sørensen, who came up with the concept of pH, wasn't clear on what the letter "p" meant. It does involve powers of 10 and can be measured using electrical potentials, so the best guesses are "potential" or "power", or several words that mean "power" in other languages and also happen to start with "p". Bottom line, we don't know, and unless somebody discovers more of Sørensen's notes or a way to speak with the dead, we never will.
The 'p' could have a different meaning for a variety of languages. 'Puissance' in French, 'Potenz' in German, 'potential' or 'power' in English, 'pondus' or 'potentia' in Latin, or 'Potens' in Danish (probably the Danish one originally, since it was a Danish chemist who first introduced the measurement).
It's very fun that because of the vagueness, various languages can have its meaning directly translated to their own.
The p is for potential, as in potential Hydrogen. pH can be used to establish a concentration of protium (H+) in solution. When learning about pH in school, we used pOH (potential hydroxide) as well to speak about bases.
32 replies
Why is there a random watermark on an xkcd? The original is here, for anyone who wants the alt text: https://xkcd.com/2943/
Fair, but also, you could look up XKCD comics by their name or transcript and link to them directly when you come across them.
It's not probably?
????
I'm french, what does this say?
Je crois que il a besoin de VPN pour voir ce méme
Søren Sørensen, who came up with the concept of pH, wasn't clear on what the letter "p" meant. It does involve powers of 10 and can be measured using electrical potentials, so the best guesses are "potential" or "power", or several words that mean "power" in other languages and also happen to start with "p". Bottom line, we don't know, and unless somebody discovers more of Sørensen's notes or a way to speak with the dead, we never will.
That's why I was careful to say, "speak with dead," (after the D&D spell) implying a conversation.
That's actually an interesting one.
The 'p' could have a different meaning for a variety of languages. 'Puissance' in French, 'Potenz' in German, 'potential' or 'power' in English, 'pondus' or 'potentia' in Latin, or 'Potens' in Danish (probably the Danish one originally, since it was a Danish chemist who first introduced the measurement).
It's very fun that because of the vagueness, various languages can have its meaning directly translated to their own.
All those words have the same meaning.
And the same origin, it's not a coincidence they all start with P
There's also pico-, prefix for 10^-12
Protons. As in protons, How many. On a weird logarithmic scale with 7 in the middle, of course.
The p is for potential, as in potential Hydrogen. pH can be used to establish a concentration of protium (H+) in solution. When learning about pH in school, we used pOH (potential hydroxide) as well to speak about bases.
Oh we're going to pHight today, is that it?
Easy. Pico Henry. Not sure why chemists are so concerned with such a small amount of magnetism though...
Kek
It's power of Hydrogen. We should've been using Watts to measure it this whole time.
PornHub
I was taught potenz in my school textbooks. potenz Hydrogen
Phat-ass hydrogen
Potencial de hidrógeno
Negative log of the concentration of…(Hydrogen ions, in pH).
I don't get what the joke is
Doesn't it mean "potential" ?
Potentially, yes
Is it debated ?
Yes, and also, whoosh
Potentially
I thought it was "power". That's probably wrong though.