"Process and perish" or multiple buffers with push-down stacks?

Stephen C Levinson1

  • 1Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics,Nijmegen & Donders Institute for Brain,Cognition and Behaviour,Radboud University,6500 AH Nijmegen,The Netherlands.stephen.levinson@mpi.nl.

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Buffers play a crucial role in stabilizing the pH of a solution by mitigating the effects of small amounts of added acid or base. They consist of a weak acid and its conjugate base or a weak base and its conjugate acid. A solution of acetic acid and sodium acetate is an example of a buffer that consists of a weak acid and its salt: CH3COOH (aq) + CH3COONa (aq). An example of a buffer that consists of a weak base and its salt is a solution of ammonia and ammonium chloride: NH3 (aq) + NH4Cl (aq).
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