this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2025
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Science Memes
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I'm french, what does this say?
That's actually an interesting one.
The 'p' could have a different meaning for a variety of languages. 'Puissance' in French, 'Potenz' in German, 'potential' or 'power' in English, 'pondus' or 'potentia' in Latin, or 'Potens' in Danish (probably the Danish one originally, since it was a Danish chemist who first introduced the measurement).
It's very fun that because of the vagueness, various languages can have its meaning directly translated to their own.
All those words have the same meaning.
There's also pico-, prefix for 10^-12
Potencial de hidrógeno
Easy. Pico Henry. Not sure why chemists are so concerned with such a small amount of magnetism though...
I don't get what the joke is
Nobody actually knows what the p means but we keep using it anyway. The guy who coined it is long dead.
Doesn't it mean "potential" ?
Potentially, yes
Is it debated ?
Yes, and also, whoosh
I thought it was "power". That's probably wrong though.
Potentially
It's power of Hydrogen. We should've been using Watts to measure it this whole time.
Søren Sørensen, who came up with the concept of pH, wasn't clear on what the letter "p" meant. It does involve powers of 10 and can be measured using electrical potentials, so the best guesses are "potential" or "power", or several words that mean "power" in other languages and also happen to start with "p". Bottom line, we don't know, and unless somebody discovers more of Sørensen's notes or a way to speak with the dead, we never will.
We can all speak to the dead. The problem is that they can't answer.
That's why I was careful to say, "speak with dead," (after the D&D spell) implying a conversation.
PornHub
Negative log of the concentration of…(Hydrogen ions, in pH).
penis
Protons. As in protons, How many. On a weird logarithmic scale with 7 in the middle, of course.
The p is for potential, as in potential Hydrogen. pH can be used to establish a concentration of protium (H+) in solution. When learning about pH in school, we used pOH (potential hydroxide) as well to speak about bases.
Phat-ass hydrogen
Why is there a random watermark on an xkcd? The original is here, for anyone who wants the alt text: https://xkcd.com/2943/
I scrape the bottom of the internet barrel through a special firefox container. It's like growing memes on agar. Sometimes there's a little contam.
Fair, but also, you could look up XKCD comics by their name or transcript and link to them directly when you come across them.
I was taught potenz in my school textbooks. potenz Hydrogen