PH a pH of 7.3. This is clearly wrong as an acid solution should have a pH of less than 7. Treating the system as a mixture of hydrochloric acid and the amphoteric substance water, a pH of 6.89 results. A weak acid or the conjugate acid of a weak base can be treated using the same formalism. First, an acid dissociation constant is defined as follows. Electrical charges are omitted from subsequent equations for the sake of generality and its value is assumed to have been determined by experiment. This being so, there are three unknown concentrations, [HA], [H] and
PH cause changes in electrode potential. To resolve this problem, an alternative series of buffers based on artificial seawater was developed. This new series resolves the problem of ionic strength differences between samples and the buffers, and the new pH scale is referred to as the 'total scale', often denoted as pH. The total scale was defined using a medium containing sulfate ions. These ions experience protonation, H + SO HSO, such that the total scale includes the effect of both protons (free hydrogen ions) and hydrogen sulfate ions: An alternative scale, the 'free scale', often denoted 'pH', omits this consideration