No, you don't often hear your local news broadcaster say "Folks,
today's pH value of Dryville Creek is 6.3"! But pH is an
important measurement of water. Maybe for a science project
you have taken the pH of water samples in your chemistry class ...
and here at the U.S. Geological Survey we take a pH measurement
whenever water is studied. Not only does the pH of a stream
affect organisms living in the water, a changing pH in a stream can
be an indicator of increasing pollution or some other environmental
factor. As this diagram shows, pH ranges from 0 to 14, with 7 being neutral. pHs less than 7 are acidic while pHs greater than 7 are alkaline (basic). You can see that acid rain can be very acidic, and it can affect the environment in a negative way.
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Common water measurements
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Picture of a pH meter
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USGS Water Resources The URL for this page is http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/phdiagram.html Comments? Contact Howard Perlman Last Modified: Feb 04, 2004 |