What are acids and bases?
The Hydrogen Tug-of-War
What are acids and bases?
Squeeze a lemon and your mouth puckers. Bite into soap (please don't) and it tastes weirdly bitter and slippery. These two feelings live at opposite ends of one of chemistry's most famous rivalries: acids versus bases.
To understand the rivalry, meet the troublemaker: a tiny piece of water called a hydrogen ion. Picture it as a single hydrogen with its electron stripped away, leaving a lonely little positive charge. It's small, restless, and it bumps into everything. The whole acid-base story is really just the story of where these little charges go.
