The Science and Uses of Salt

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The Science of Salt

2/8/2019

By: Kyle Wang

Everyone has heard of salt in one way or another, and it is also used very often. You can put table salt on your food to make it taste saltier, and during the winter, you can use salt to melt away the ice and the snow. However, salt does not get its own spot on the periodic table because it is not a pure element. Instead, salt is a type of compound that is created when sodium (Na) is combined with chlorine (Cl).

A compound is pure chemical substance that is made of two or more elements. This is the opposite of a mixture, which is when two or more substances combine, usually by mixing them together. Surprisingly, sodium and chlorine, the two substances required to make salt are pretty dangerous on its own. While sodium is necessary for the survival of a person, too much sodium can cause seizures, comas, and death, along with not enough sodium. Chlorine, the chemicals used to disinfect pools, in tap water, and etc. can cause eye and skin irritation and also severe burns. When sodium and chloride come into contact with each other, the sodium transfers one electron to the chlorine. This action turns the sodium into a cation. The chlorine gains an electron, so it becomes an anion. Suddenly, the sodium and chlorine are both unstable without an equal number of protons and electrons, so it order to solve this, the sodium and chlorine bond together, thus forming an ionic bond now known as salt.

Besides the obvious uses of salt, such as simply putting it in your food, there are other uses of salt. For example, in road salt, the salt slows down the freezing process, and also makes it harder to freeze. The sodium chloride is almost like an impurity that makes it harder for the snow into ice, and it also lowers the freezing temperature from zero degrees Celsius to -4 degrees Celsius. Also, before refrigerators existed, salt was used to preserve food. This method of refrigeration worked because bacteria cannot survive in such salty environment, therefore eliminating the bacteria from infecting the food.

As you can see salt, seems to have an enormous impact on the world today, and as technology improves, the ways salt can be used could be increased. For example, because salt can become electrically charged, salt could possibly used to power a house temporarily when the power goes down. However, technology like that is far from the present, and lots of innovations before something like that could possibly happen.
Image result for salt
Image result for nacl
Salt is made when combining sodium and chlorine.

Sources:
Chem4KidsGarden And Plate



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