How to Calculate Hydrogen Concentration

A substance's "pH" refers most simply to how acidic or basic it is. In the non-chemistry world, you may encounter pH in advertisements for shampoos and conditioners, if you maintain a fish tank or while cleaning your swimming pool. Within chemistry, pH represents a number---namely, the negative logarithm of the number of hydrogen ions (H+) contained in an acid or base. You can calculate the concentration of hydrogen ions by making your pH negative and taking the inverse logarithm of this value.

Things You'll Need

  • Scientific calculator (see Resources)
  • pH test trips
  • pH meter (optional)
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Instructions

    • 1

      Determine your solution's pH if your instructor of textbook doesn't give it to you outright. If you have a "pOH" value, simply subtract that number from 14 to get the pH. For example, if your solution has a pOH of 11.2, it will have a pH of 2.8. If you have a solution with an unknown pH, measure it using paper test strips or, if you have one, a pH meter.

    • 2

      Plug your pH value into your scientific calculator. Keep in mind that the pH represents that negative logarithm of hydrogen ion concentration---in other words, hit the "+/-" key to make your value negative.

    • 3

      Hit the "10^x" button to calculate the "inverse logarithm" of your pH---hit the "=" button a second time if your calculator doesn't immediately express this value in decimal form. For the example solution with a pH of 2.8, this value is .00158, or 1.58 x 10^(-3) M hydrogen ions, where "M" represents concentration in terms of "moles" of hydrogen per liter of solution.

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