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Does neutral always mean pH7?

Updated: Apr 1, 2022

The answer is no! Let's look at this in a bit more depth.


What does neutral actually mean?

In the context of acids and bases, the term 'neutral' means a solution has equal concentrations of H+ and OH- ions. This can be written as:



Now let's think about water...

For water, the dissociation equilibrium is as follows:



Since the number of moles of H+ and OH- in this equation are equal, any dissociated H+ must have an equal number of OH- partners. In the case of pure water, there are no other sources of H+ and OH-, so the concentrations of H+ and OH- are equal.


So what does that tell us? Pure water is neutral! (which I expect you knew already!)


Now let's consider pH. Having got this far, a mistake would then be to equate neutrality to pH7. We know that water has a pH of 7 at room temperature, but it's important to remember that this changes with temperature. So water at 100 oC actually has a pH closer to 6 than 7. Changing the temperature affects the equilibrium constant for the dissociation of water which influences the concentration of H+ ions. This naturally affects the pH since its definition is:



The crucial thing here is that whatever the new concentration of H+ is, it will still be equal to the concentration of OH-. The 1:1 ratio from the dissociation equilibrium has not changed, meaning the water is still neutral.


In conclusion, pure water at any temperature will be neutral, but it may or may not have a pH of 7.

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