Question: What Does pH Stand For?
Have you ever wondered what pH stands for or where the term originated? Here is the answer to the question and a look at the history of the pH scale.
Answer: pH is the negative log of hydrogen ion concentration in a water-based solution. The term "pH" was first described by Danish biochemist Søren Peter Lauritz Sørensen in 1909. pH is an abbreviation for "power of hydrogen" where "p" is short for the German word for power, potenz and H is the element symbol for hydrogen. The H is capitalized because it is standard to capitalize element symbols. The abbreviation also works in French, with pouvoir hydrogen translating as "the power of hydrogen".
