The student has precipitated and digested the barium sulfate on his/her side. But on the addition of in the solution, the solution become cloudy. This happened because incomplete precipitation of barium sulfate by the student. When is added, there are still sulfate ions present in the solution with combines with and forms and the formation of this precipitate makes the solution cloudy.
A change of one unit on the pH scale represents a change in the concentration of hydrogen ions by a factor of 10, a change in two units represents a change in the concentration of hydrogen ions by a factor of 100. Thus, small changes in pH represent large changes in the concentrations of hydrogen ions.