This week we did pH testing. pH testing is a scientific way to find out if a liquid is acidic, alkaline or neutral. If a liquid is acidic then it can start dissolving things, for example our stomach acid, or hydrochloric acid. It can dissolve virtually everything, even metal. The only exception to this is if it’s harder or denser than steel. If a liquid is alkaline then it simply just makes an acidic liquid turn into a neutral liquid, but if the alkaline has a lower pH level than the acid then the acid will turn the alkaline into acid. Neutral is the number seven on the pH scale and neither had the effects of an acid or an alkaline liquid, instead it just doesn’t really do anything. Neutral liquids are normally our rain water but because of greenhouse gases our rain water is now acidic and can create caves by dissolving limestone cavities to create rock. 

We tested the pH of various liquids including soda, water mixed with baking soda, water mixed with detergent, milk, our school’s water, orange juice and tomato juice. Fruit juices had a pH lower than six most of the time, diluted waters were alkalis, soda had a pH of 3.7, milk had a pH of five and water was neutral. Our next experiment was about the pH level of soil. Certain vegetables and plants required a certain soil pH to grow. The range of soil pH for plants is about six to seven. We took samples of soil from three different areas, those being the garden, the field and the bark soil. Once we had all three samples, we mixed them with water and mixed it to dilute the water, then dipping a universal pH strip into the mixture and reading the pH. The soil was up to standard, ranging from 6.5 to 6.7.