Main Page

Welcome to the explain xkcd wiki!
We have an explanation for all 2943 xkcd comics, and only 12 (0%) are incomplete. Help us finish them!

Latest comic

Go to this comic explanation

|< < Prev Comic #2943 (June 7, 2024)

Unsolved Chemistry Problems

Title text: I'm an H⁺ denier, in that I refuse to consider loose protons to be real hydrogen, so I personally believe it stands for 'pretend'.

Explanation

This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Created by a Loose Proton Called H+ - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.

There is a list of mathematical problems that are yet to be solved (such as P=NP). This comic makes a spin on it, by stating that there are (as of yet) unsolved chemistry problems.

Arbitrary Enzyme Design:

Enzymes are molecules (usually proteins) that act as catalysts to speed up biological processes. These are often important in understanding and curing diseases, so being able to design new enzymes can be critical in medical research.

Protein Folding:

Proteins are large molecules that consist of chains of amino acids. These amino acids chains become folded folded in extremely complex ways into intricate 3D structures, and the way a protein is folded is of critical importance to its function. "Misfolded" proteins like prions can be inactive or cause other proteins to become misfolded, which can lead to fatal illnesses. Because of the huge importance of proteins to biological life, biologists have devoted significant attention over many decades to the problem of protein structure prediction. This refers to the ability to predict the 3D structure of a protein based on the amino acid sequence, and remains one of the most important problems in computational biology.

Depolymerization:

What the “p” in pH stands for:

“p” shows up in pH, pKa, pKb, and other things related to the concentration of H+ ions and OH- ions. The meaning of the "p" in "pH" has been the subject of much dispute. It is sometimes referred to as "power of Hydrogen", but the term was introduced by Søren Peter Lauritz Sørensen, who did not publish his results in English. The letter p could stand for the French puissance, German Potenz, or Danish potens, all meaning "power", or it could mean "potential". All of these words start with the letter p in French, German, and Danish, which were the languages in which Sørensen published.

Someone, presumably Randall Monroe, claims that they refuse to believe that loose protons are hydrogen atoms, and as such, the “p” stands for pretend. This could work, by saying that it is the pretend Ka and the Pretend Kb. However, Hydrogen atoms and loose protons each have a single proton. An Ion is any atom with a number of electrons not equal to the amount of protons in an atom. This counts for both more electrons (Anions), and less electrons (Cations).

Transcript

This transcript is incomplete. Please help editing it! Thanks.

[Hairbun stands behind a lectern on a podium with two Cueballs and Megan standing behind her. There is a "Grand Opening" sign hanging in the background along with some ornaments.]

Hairbun: Our lab will be working on chemistry's top unsolved problems: arbitrary enzyme design, protein folding, depolymerization, and, of course, the biggest one of all:

Hairbun: Figuring out what the "p" in "pH" stands for.

Is this out of date? .

New here?

Last 7 days (Top 10)

Rank Score Pages Changes Username 1 31 28 31 Usb-rave 2 28 23 29 TheusafBOT 3 21 15 23 Psychoticpotato 4 18 14 19 Elektrizikekswerk 5 12 2 26 Maplestrip 6 11 5 13 Asdf 7 8 5 8 Apollo11 8 7 5 6 JBYoshi 9 7 2 8 ProphetZarquon 10 7 2 8 boB

Lots of people contribute to make this wiki a success. Many of the recent contributors, listed above, have just joined. You can do it too! Create your account here.

You can read a brief introduction about this wiki at explain xkcd. Feel free to sign up for an account and contribute to the wiki! We need explanations for comics, characters, themes and everything in between. If it is referenced in an xkcd web comic, it should be here.

• If you're new to wiki editing, see the explain xkcd:Editor FAQ for a specific guidance to this Wiki and the more general help on how to edit wiki pages. There's also a handy wikicode cheatsheet.

• Discussion about the wiki itself happens at the Community portal.

• You can browse the comics from List of all comics or by navigating the category tree at Category:Comics.

• There are incomplete explanations listed here. Feel free to help out by expanding them!

Rules

Don't be a jerk!

There are a lot of comics that don't have set-in-stone explanations; feel free to put multiple interpretations in the wiki page for each comic.

If you want to talk about a specific comic, use its discussion page.

Please only submit material directly related to (and helping everyone better understand) xkcd... and of course only submit material that can legally be posted (and freely edited). Off-topic or other inappropriate content is subject to removal or modification at admin discretion, and users who repeatedly post such content will be blocked.

If you need assistance from an admin, post a message to the Admin requests board.