Because water hardly ionizes , it is a very poor conductor of electricity. What is of interest in this reading, however, is the acid-base nature of a substance like water.
Water actually behaves both like an acid and a base .
It is just the opposite of pH. A high pOH means the solution is acidic while a low pOH means the solution is basic. These conjugate pairs only differ by a proton . The advantage of this theory is that many more reactions can be considered acid-base reactions because they do not have to occur in solution. This process is called hydrolysis . This is because the conjugate base of a strong acid is very weak and cannot undergo hydrolysis.