Name: If There's Acid Rain, Is There Basic Rain?
Uploaded: 2018-07-15T12:15:57.000Z
Duration: 3 min 10 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Pretty much everyone's heard of acid rain:
rain that's more acidic than normal because

it mixed with pollutants in the atmosphere.

Acid rain can corrode buildings, weaken nutrients
in soil, and harm plants and animals — so

But acids are only one side of the pH spectrum.

Well, because even if it can happen, it's
probably not worth losing sleep over.

While scientists do describe acidity in a
few different ways, depending on what they're

doing, one of the most common is using pH.

And one way of understanding pH is to focus
on the concentration of hydrogen ions in a

As pH drops, the substance is more acidic,
and essentially there's more hydrogen ions

And as pH goes up, the substance is more basic.

It either grabs hydrogen off of other molecules,
or forms hydroxide ions that can grab free

Pure water's pH is exactly 7, which is perfectly
neutral.

And natural rain's pH is about 5.6; it's
slightly acidic from mixing with carbon dioxide

Rain can get more acidic if water in the atmosphere
mixes with gases like sulfur dioxide or nitrogen

oxides, which mostly come from pollution.

And once rain's pH falls below 5, it's
officially known as acid rain.

Acid rain can be surprisingly acidic: Some
samples have been comparable to vinegar, or

even stomach acid — with a pH of around
1.5.

Because of how the pH scale works, that's
about 10,000 times more acidic than normal

In principle, things could go the other way,
too.

If atmospheric water mixed with the right
stuff, it could become basic instead of acidic.

But rain's natural acidity means that it
would need a lot of compound to turn basic,

and there isn't much stuff in high enough
concentrations in the atmosphere to affect

Plus, we just release way more pH-lowering
chemicals than pH-raising ones — making

the challenge even harder…not that this
is something to strive for.

But that doesn't mean basic rain is impossible.

Rain near deserts and other dusty places with
calcium-rich soil tend to have more neutral

Calcium compounds are a pH-raiser when they
mix with atmospheric water.

And there are even a few places where enough
calcium or ammonia get into the atmosphere

by natural sources or pollution and turn rain
slightly basic.

Because so many more pollutants turn rain
acidic, scientists have actually been searching

for ways to use the science of basic rain
to their advantage.

When acids and bases react, they neutralize
each other, making a substance that's much

And some researchers have considered releasing
calcium carbonate or another base-maker into

the atmosphere, or leaving them on the ground
in places affected by acid rain, to neutralize

So even if basic rain isn't a thing most
of the time in most of the world, the science

behind it might help us battle our environmental
issues.

Thanks to our Patreon patrons for asking this
weird question!

If you want to learn about more strange precipitation,
check out our video about animals falling

And if you want to keep discovering all kinds
of science with us, you can always go to youtube.com/scishow

Subtitles ListPlay Video

If There's Acid Rain, Is There Basic Rain?

stuff

weird

subscribe

essentially