The Many Forms of the Verb TO BE

The Many Forms of the Verb TO BE The Many Forms of the Verb TO BE The Many Forms of the Verb TO BE By Maeve Maddox After reading O Second Person Where Art Thou reader Bill G asks: How can I explain to my students why the singular â€Å"you† takes the plural verb â€Å"are?† Is there something obvious I am missing? Even â€Å"thou† took â€Å"art.† What is the history of this shift? The answer to the first part of this question is that are is the form of the verb that goes with you. If you can be either singular or plural, so can are: You are the one person I love. (singular) You are the best friends in the world. (plural) The only other word for are that ever went with you was sind (or sindon). Clearly, that one hasnt survived into Modern English. Of all Modern English verbs, to be has the most forms: am, are, is, was, were, be, being, been. In addition, the helping verb will is used to form a future tense with be (e.g. I will be with you in a minute.) The forms are so different in appearance that they dont seem to belong to the same verb. The fact is, they dont. Oh, they do now, but they came from three different roots and merged in the Old English verbs beon and wesan. (NOTE: Since I dont know how to import the special OE symbols, Ill use th for the /th/ sound and y for the yot.) In a conjugation of the Old English (West Saxon dialect) verb beon/wesan, todays English speaker will recognize the modern forms in: ic eom =I am thu eart =thou art ic waes =I was ye waere =you were You are, however, was written in West Saxon as ye sind. Although ye earun or ye aron did exist in a northern dialect of Old English, sind is the word for are in most of the Old English literature that survives. But for a fluke of history, we could just as easily be saying you sind as you are. An interesting footnote is that English once had three grammatical numbers and not just two. Modern English has two numbers: singular and plural. Old English had three: singular, dual, and plural. Each number had its own set of pronouns: First person: ic=I wit =two-person we we =more-than-two-persons we Second person: thu = thou yit =you two ye =yall Third person: he =he hit =it heo =she hie =they (For a complete explanation, see the relevant sections in Sweets Anglo-Saxon Primer or Wardales An Old English Grammar.) Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Grammar category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:Yours faithfully or Yours sincerely?3 Cases of Complicated HyphenationThe Uses of â€Å"The†

How to Make a Phosphate Buffer Solution

How to Make a Phosphate Buffer Solution The goal of a buffer solution is to help maintain a stable pH when a small amount of acid or base is introduced into a solution. A phosphate buffer solution is a handy buffer to have around, especially for biological applications. Because phosphoric acid has multiple dissociation constants, you can prepare phosphate buffers near any of the three pHs, which are at 2.15, 6.86, and 12.32. The buffer is most commonly prepared at pH 7 using monosodium phosphate and its conjugate base, disodium phosphate. Phosphate Buffer Materials Monosodium phosphateDisodium phosphateWaterPhosphoric acid to make the pH more acidic or sodium hydroxide to make the pH more alkalinepH meterGlasswareHot plate with stirring bar Prepare the Phosphate Buffer Decide on the concentration of the buffer. Most buffers are used at a concentration between 0.1 M and 10 M. If you make up a concentrated buffer solution, you can dilute it as needed.​Decide on the pH for your buffer. This pH should be within one pH unit from the pKa of the acid/conjugate base. So, you can prepare a buffer at pH 2 or pH 7, for example, but pH 9 would be pushing it.Use the Henderson-Hasselbach equation to calculate how much acid and base you need. You can simplify the calculation if you make 1 liter of buffer. Select the pKa value that is closest to the pH of your buffer. For example, if you want the pH of your buffer to be 7, then use the pKa of 6.9: pH pKa log ([Base]/[Acid])ratio of [Base]/[Acid] 1.096The molarity of the buffer is the sum of the molarities of the acid and conjugate base or the sum of [Acid] [Base]. For a 1 M buffer (selected to make the calculation easy), [Acid] [Base] 1.[Base] 1 - [Acid].Substitute this into the ratio and solve:[Base ] 0.523 moles/L.Now solve for [Acid]: [Base] 1 - [Acid], so [Acid] 0.477 moles/L. Prepare the solution by mixing 0.477 moles of monosodium phosphate and 0.523 moles of disodium phosphate in a little less than a liter of water.Check the pH using a pH meter and adjust the pH as necessary using phosphoric acid or sodium hydroxide.Once you have reached the desired pH, add water to bring the total volume of phosphoric acid buffer to 1 L.If you prepared this buffer as a stock solution, you can dilute it to make up buffers at other concentrations, such as 0.5 M or 0.1 M. Advantages and Disadvantages of Phosphate Buffers The two key advantages of phosphate buffers are that phosphate is highly soluble in water and that it has an extremely high buffering capacity. However, these may be offset by certain disadvantages in some situations. Phosphates inhibit enzymatic reactions.Phosphate precipitates in ethanol, so it cant be used in preparations to precipitate DNA or RNA.Phosphates sequester divalent cations (e.g., Ca2 and Mg2).