ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors consider how the incremental addition of a strong base or acid causes incremental changes in pH, focusing on monoprotic systems. A titration of a given volume of a sample solution is usually carried out by adding small volume increments of a concentrated (e.g., 0.1 N) strong base or acid solution (the titrant). While the mathematics of titrations might be viewed as, well, tedious and confusing, it is fundamentally important for understanding how aqueous solutions behave in response to changes in acid or base content. First, most of the salt in the oceans is the result of the grand back-and-forth chemical neutralization that has occurred over geologic time of metal oxide bases from terrestrial solids reacting with added HCl from volcanism and vice versa. Second, natural waters undergo titration changes whenever there are spills of strong acid or base, and when acid rain falls on a lake watershed system.
