Fun fact: The exact meaning of the letter p in "pH" is disputed, as Sørensen did not explain why he used it. Sørensen describes a way of measuring pH using pote

Fun fact: The exact meaning of the letter p in "pH" is disputed, as Sørensen did not explain why he used it. Sørensen describes a way of measuring pH using potential differences, and it represents the negative power of 10 in the concentration of hydrogen ions. The letter p could stand for the French puissance, German Potenz, or Danish potens, meaning "power", or it could mean "potential". All the words for these start with the letter p in French, German, and Danish—all languages Sørensen published in: Carlsberg Laboratory was French-speaking, German was the dominant language of scientific publishing, and Sørensen was Danish. He also used the letter q in much the same way elsewhere in the paper. He might also have labelled the test solution "p" and the reference solution "q" arbitrarily; these letters are often paired. Some literature sources state that the "pH" stands for the Latin term pondus hydrogenii (quantity of hydrogen) or potentia hydrogenii (power of hydrogen), although this is not supported by Sørensen's writings. Currently in chemistry, the p stands for "decimal logarithm of"