pH vs pOH

[Jon Phan 1B]

From what I have seen, pH is used a lot during when learning chemistry and some portion of biology while pOH is rarely mentioned. Why is talking about Acids&Bases usually in the context of pH rather than pOH?

[eunicevazquez_2I]

I believe it's just to make things less confusing, so we are all in the same page when talking about an acid or a base.

[Trisha Badjatia 2L]

Hi! I agree with what the last person said, and I also think it's because talking about protons is more convenient than talking about hydroxide ions.

[Claire_Sabol_2G]

Just as Eunice mentioned, we essentially use pH to describe solutions so we have a straight scale for measuring its acidity. Theoretically, it would be correct for someone to describe a solution using the pOH value, as it is essentially the "opposite" of pH. However, we use pH simply because it's what most of us are accustomed to, and we tend to think about solutions in terms of its H+ concentration, perhaps because it is easier to visualize than OH- concentration.

[Jericho Ansay 1C]

Yes, to make things easier, I believe we refer to acids and bases more concerning their pH; however, it isn't necessarily incorrect to consider their pOH.

[Joseph Ettipio]

I think that it's just a convention for ph to be used over poh. Everybody just universally decided that it would be a lot less confusing to use one main scale of measurement. After all, what if we measured cars moving forward in terms of their mph and cars moving backward in terms of their reverse mph? It might work, but would add needless complication.

[Amy Kalteis 2F]

As other people have said, I think it might be just assumed to be pH as the standard so that we are all on the same page. However, there will certainly be situations where it would be more useful to refer to pOH instead of pH (although pOH can still be calculated from pH, and vice versa).

[Veronica Larson- 1I]

I think it's just so that things are less confusing. While it wouldn't be wrong to talk about a solution in terms of its pOH, it's usually more convenient to talk about the solution in terms of the H+ concentrations and usually what we are accustomed to.

[Amanda Tran 1D]

You can determine pH if given pOH, and you can find pOH if given the pH, since we know that pH + pOH = 14. Using pH is just more common when describing acids and bases, but you technically can use pOH too, it's just a matter of what the problem is asking for and what the context is.

[VeronicaShepherd3B]

Do we know if the pOH is suppose to always be higher than pH?

[Sammy Liu]

This is strictly speculation, but pH is most likely used just for simplicity. Instead of having to constantly switch between pH and pOH, scientists may just use pH to be straight forward. Also, because they are related (pH + pOH = 14), it is quite easy to switch in between, so there is no need to use both values.

Hope this helps!

[Kayla Ziebell 1H]

I think pH is more commonly used and talked about because it deals with protons and keeps everyone on the same page, but pOH is still very easy to solve for once having the pH so it is easy to move between them.

[Naomi Christian 1E]

Do we know if the pOH is suppose to always be higher than pH?

pOH will not always be higher than pH. For example, if we have a strong base with pH 13, the pOH will be 1. pH+pOH=14. The pOH should be higher than pH if you are talking about an acid, but not a base.

[Jillian Sarquiz- 2B]

I think it might be because many people are familiar that pH<7 is acidic, pH=7 is neutral, and pH>7 is basic. But people may not know much about how to interpret pOH.

[Sean Sanders 1E]

I believe this is because pH is more commonly used when referring to the acidity/basicity of a solution. We can just as easily refer to every solution in terms of pOH, however.

[hanniaghernandez]

I think that we use pH becuase it is a term that is taught more than pOH. But like professor states in lecture, if we know pOH we can figure out the pH and visa versa if we know the pH we can calculate the pOH by using: 14=pH+pOH.