Acid-base titration curve
MCAT glossary · Chemical & Physical Foundations of Biological Systems
Definition
Equivalence point on plot of pH vs titrant volume; midpoint of buffer region = pKa for weak acid; half-equivalence: pH = pKa.
Acid-base titration curve in plain English
Imagine slowly pouring a base into an acid while watching how sour-vs-soapy the mix is (that's pH). If you graph pH against how much you've poured, you get a titration curve — a line that stays flat, then suddenly leaps up. That sudden jump is the equivalence point: the exact moment you've added just enough to neutralize all the acid. For a weak acid there's also a flat 'buffer' stretch that resists change, and its midpoint (the half-equivalence point) is special because there the pH equals the pKa — a handy number that tells you how strong the weak acid is.
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