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1. Soluble chemicals
OK, we'll start at the top. Everything you're dealing with in a tank of water is to do with ions. Ions are either atoms or molecules of a chemical substance which have an imbalance of charge so that they're either positive or negative - how an individual 'species' (general term for an atom or molecule) behaves depends on what it's made of. Most chemical compounds split into ions in water and this is how they become dissolved - Intact species can't exist in solution but ions can quite happily interact with water molecules due to their charge.
1.1 Water ions
As well as the chemicals you put in, water also does the same thing. At any one time, a small proportion of a body of water will be split into H+ ions (positively charged hydrogen) and OH- ions (negatively charged oxygen with a hydrogen atom attached to it). These are what allow other chemicals to dissolve. Which leads us on to...
2. Acidity
First, let's dispel a myth. There isn't really any such thing as alkalinity. The term alkalinity is an academic crutch for describing a substance that is less acidic than pure water. Everything should really be considered in terms of acidity.
Acidity is quite simply the proportion of H+ ions in a solution. Its common notation, pH, means just that - proportion of H. Water has a pH of 7, which corresponds to 10-7 ppm, or parts per million of H+ ions.
Your question is a little strange. I'm not sure that we quite understand what you mean by do.
In a basic chemical sense as everybody says H+ ions make thinks acidic.
In a biological sense hydrogen ions are involved in many of the chemical reactions involved in your body. Not least in the ATP cycle which powers the cells in your body.
They are more a chemical and don't have a specific role in the body in the way that red blood cells have a role in transporting oxygen or that your heart pumps blood.
Hope this helps a bit.
Hey good answer from vicars! i would also suggest going on to Wikipedia. Ever heard of it? I use it for much of my degree homework. The website is:-
www.wikipedia.com just type in the info you want. i.e hydrogen, and away you go! It opened up a whole new world for me. The site is not moderated (or peer reviewed), but I would say that it is still a pretty reliable source of information!
Happy times ...
I teach a degree course in chemisrty - You might get a few marks for a GSCE question based on vicars refs, but most of it is too generalised to be correct:
1. there are a huge number of compounds that dissolved in water but do not form ions.
2. it is not soley, or even largely, the dissociation of water that results in its ability to act as a solvent.
3. Both acidity and alkalinity are relative as neutral pH is defined as being that of pure water at stp. To say there is no such thing as alkalinity is to say there is no such thing as acidity. pH is dirrived from pKa but there is also a pKb and we could define a pOH scale wich would seem to imply there is no acidity, but that it is an 'academic crutch'.
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