pH Letter Meaning Mystery

When Danish chemist Søren Peter Lauritz Sørensen introduced the pH scale in 1909, he clearly used “H” to represent hydrogen but never actually explained what the “p” stood for. Over time, scientists suggested meanings like the German "Potenz" or the French "puissance," both meaning “power,” while others linked it to terms like “potential of hydrogen.” But none of those explanations come directly from Sørensen himself. That leaves one of the most widely used scientific terms with a letter whose original meaning is still debated more than a century later.

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