• Question: How were acids and alkalis discovered?

    Asked by to Naomi on 19 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
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      Naomi Osborne answered on 19 Jun 2014:

      For thousands of years people have known lemon juice and vinegar are sour but it wasn’t until the 1600s that Robert Boyle labelled substances that were acid (latin for sour) or alkali and invented a way to show the difference between the two (litmus test).

      The definition of acids and alkalis didn’t come until the 1800s, when Svante Arrhenius described acids as compounds that release hydrogen ions in water, and bases release hydroxide ions.

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