Baking soda is also called sodium bicarbonate or officially, by its IUPAC name, sodium hydrogen carbonate, and has the formula show in the picture. IUPAC is an abbreviation for the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemists. The equation below shows sodium hydrogen carbonate dissociating into a sodium cation and hydrogen carbonate anion. The hydrogen carbonate anion, in turn, hydrolyzed into carbonic acid and a hydroxyl anion. It is the excess hydroxyl anions (OH-) that turned the water basic and give the solution a pH of 8 with excess OH- anions.