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Vinegar, lemon juice and other foods which tastes sour was known to everyone but why does it taste sour has become known few hundred years ago when the concept of acid, base was discovered. |
Acid is derived from the Latin word acere, which means sour and the foods taste sour because they are acidic in nature.
Robert Boyle, an Irish writer and amateur chemist, was the first one to discover the acids and bases in the 17th century.
According to Boyle, acids are sour in taste, corrosive to metals, changes the color of litmus to red and when mixed with bases becomes less acidic. Bases are slippery in touch, changes the color of litmus to blue and when mixed with acids becomes less basic. Though, Boyle and other chemist took many attempts to establish the exact reason for the properties of acids and bases, but they did not come to any conclusion. The reason for the behavior of acids and bases was become clear after 200 years when the first definition of acids and bases came into effect.
Svante Arrhenius, a Swedish scientist put forward a theory in the late 1800s, that water has the capacity to break down the compound and make it dissolve in water by separating their individual ions. He said that acids are compounds which have hydrogen and when dissolve into water liberate hydrogen ions into the solution.
The theory of Arrhenius clarified many things about acids and bases. His theory described the reasons that why all the acids and bases showed the similar properties. It was because acids liberate hydrogen ions or H+ into solution and bases liberates OH- into solution. However, he also explained when acids and bases oppose each other, and then new term neutralization develops. The result of H+ and OH- ions lead to H2O or water.
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