Yesterday, I posted the presentation that myself, Sidney Buhr, and Chapin Galena made on our acids in your stomach lab. From this I learned a little bit about bases and acids, and what make them bases and acids.
One of our best friends along this study on bases and acids was the pH scale. The pH scale measures how acidic or basic a substance is. The pH scale ranges from 0 to 14. If the pH level of a substance is less than 7 the substance is considered an acid. If the level is greater than 7 the substance is basic. And if the level is exactly 7, it is considered neutral. Now what decides the pH level of a substance? What makes it a 3 or an 8, etc, etc? It all has to do with the concentration of H+ ions and OH- ions in water. If the pH level is increasing, the H+ ions are decreasing and the OH- ions are increasing. Water has the same amount of H+ and OH- ions, so they cancel each other out. And there you go! Water is neutral.
This lab that we did, was to test which antacids would be the best at stomach relief. The best antacid would raise the pH level of the gastric acids in your stomach. It was much easier to understand what the whole "pH levels" were about, when I knew exactly what they were.
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