A question of pH?

I teach science and recently some colleague and I came across a problem with pH.

Traditionally, we are taught that pH is on a scale of 1 - 14. However, one of the text books we use has an example of a pH of -5, but does not provide an explanation.

I've search all over and the only information I can find is an unsourced reference on wikipedia.

Does anyone have any explanations for this minus pH?

Cheers

Paul

.

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