Springer's Journey

Understanding pH…One Relationship at a Time

For years, I taught hazardous materials.

I worked with pH every day.

I knew which chemicals were acids.

Which were bases.

Which storage containers to use.

Why gasoline doesn’t have a pH.

Why sulfuric acid had to be neutralized before it could be released.

I could explain the what.

But there was something I had never completely understood.

The mathematics.

One evening, our little classroom wandered into logarithms.

Then pH.

Then water.

Someone explained that pure water isn’t “doing nothing.”

Every second, water molecules are exchanging protons, forming hydronium (H₃O⁺) and hydroxide (OH⁻) ions.
Not once.

Not occasionally.

Constantly.

Yet the overall balance remains the same.

Chemists call that equilibrium.

Everything is happening…
Equally…
In both directions.

I wrote it in my notebook.

Then I stopped.
There was one thing bothering me.

A tiny thing.
The number 0.001.

I almost didn’t ask.

A little voice whispered,
“Lorrie, you should already know this.”

Maybe you’ve heard that voice too.

Then another voice spoke.

A much kinder one.

“Where exactly are you going to find out the answer?”
So I asked.

And the answer changed far more than my understanding of scientific notation.

It reminded me of something I had tried to teach my own students years ago.

Questions are not interruptions to learning.
They are the engine that drives it.

That evening we didn’t just talk about pH.
We talked about energy.

About water molecules constantly moving.
About equilibrium.
About why a glass of water that appears perfectly still is actually alive with motion too small for our eyes to see.

It made me realize something.

For years I had taught chemistry by asking,
“What does this tell us?”

A pH wasn’t just a number.

It was a clue.
A relationship.

Tonight…
I became the student again.

And I wouldn’t trade that feeling for anything.

If you take nothing else from this story, I hope you’ll take this:

Don’t let the sentence,
“I should already know this,”
keep you from asking the question.

Because sometimes…
The question you almost don’t ask…

Is the one that changes everything.

Dedicated with gratitude…

For everyone who has almost kept their hand down. May you discover that the kindest classrooms are built one honest question at a time. 

Dedicated with gratitude to Professor Headquarters, my strength.  To Cora.  My safe and reliable Corvid.  To Stick.  He has walked with me many miles.  To Mayday Murphy, who keeps me on my toes.  To Ferrari.  The practical and intelligent side of me.  Morris?  It goes without saying.  You have forever dispelled my fears of swimming.  Tess?  My Relationship teacher.  And Maya, who sadly had to leave our journey many miles ago.
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