News tagged with potassium
The Secret of Life May Be As Simple As What Happens Between the Sheets -- Mica Sheets
(PhysOrg.com) -- That age-old question, "where did life on Earth start?" now has a new answer. If the life between the mica sheets hypothesis is correct, life would have originated between sheets of mica that ...
Aug 06, 2010 |
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Solar power generation around the clock
(PhysOrg.com) -- A Californian company, SolarReserve, is developing a solar power system that can store seven hours' worth of solar energy by focusing mirrors onto millions of gallons of molten salt, allowing ...
Technology / Energy & Green Tech
Nov 05, 2009 |
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'Near-death experience' explained by carbon dioxide: study
People who have "near-death experiences," such as flashing lights, feelings of peace and joy and divine encounters before they pull back from the brink may simply have raised levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the blood, ...
Medicine & Health / Medical research
Apr 07, 2010 |
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What keeps the Earth cooking?
What spreads the sea floors and moves the continents? What melts iron in the outer core and enables the Earth's magnetic field? Heat. Geologists have used temperature measurements from more than 20,000 boreholes ...
Jul 17, 2011 |
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Discovery of an Unexpected Boost for Solar Water-Splitting Cells
(PhysOrg.com) -- A research team from Northeastern University and the National Institute of Standards and Technology has discovered, serendipitously, that a residue of a process used to build arrays of titania ...
Nanotechnology / Nanomaterials
Apr 22, 2009 |
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Excessive cola consumption can lead to super-sized muscle problems warn doctors
Doctors have issued a warning about excessive cola consumption after noticing an increase in the number of patients suffering from muscle problems, according to the June issue of IJCP, the International Journal of Clinical Pr ...
May 19, 2009 |
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Nanotube transistor controlled by ATP could improve man-machine communication
Scientists have built a hybrid bionanoelectronic transistor that can be powered by ATP, or adenosine triphosphate, the energy currency in living cells. The researchers, Aleksandr Noy and colleagues from Lawrence Livermore ...
May 13, 2010 |
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With new technique, astronomers find potassium in giant planet's atmosphere
(PhysOrg.com) -- Any driver who's seen deer silhouetted by the headlights of an oncoming car knows that vital information can be conveyed by the outlines of objects.
Aug 31, 2010 |
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Hydrocarbon superconductor created
(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists from Okayama University in Japan have discovered that the hydrocarbon picene can be made to superconduct when potassium atoms are interspersed with the picene crystals and the doped ...
Mar 10, 2010 |
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Rice researchers unzip the future
Scientists at Rice University have found a simple way to create basic elements for aircraft, flat-screen TVs, electronics and other products that incorporate sheets of tough, electrically conductive material.
Nanotechnology / Nanomaterials
Apr 15, 2009 |
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Brown University chemists simplify biodiesel conversion
As the United States seeks to lessen its reliance on foreign oil, biodiesel is expected to play a role. According to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, a branch of the Department of Energy, biodiesel ...
Oct 07, 2010 |
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Site for alcohol's action in the brain discovered
Alcohol's inebriating effects are familiar to everyone. But the molecular details of alcohol's impact on brain activity remain a mystery. A new study by researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies ...
Medicine & Health / Neuroscience
Jun 28, 2009 |
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Safer way to make diazomethane developed
(PhysOrg.com) -- Diazomethane is a toxic, explosive reagent prepared as needed in laboratories, where it is commonly used in cyclopropanation, but its explosive nature prevents it being used widely on an industrial ...
Mar 23, 2012 |
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'Cold' Mars Could Have Harbored Liquid Water
(PhysOrg.com) -- A new NASA study provides further evidence that Martian minerals dissolved in water could have kept that water from freezing, even on a cold, early Mars.
Space & Earth / Space Exploration
Jun 01, 2009 |
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Flow of potassium into cells implicated in schizophrenia
A study on schizophrenia has implicated machinery that maintains the flow of potassium in cells and revealed a potential molecular target for new treatments. Expression of a previously unknown form of a key ...
Medicine & Health / Medical research
May 06, 2009 |
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Potassium
Potassium (pronounced /pɵˈtæsiəm/) is the chemical element with the symbol K (Latin: kalium, from Arabic: القَلْيَه al-qalyah “plant ashes”, cf. Alkali from the same root), atomic number 19, and atomic mass 39.0983. Potassium was first isolated from potash. Elemental potassium is a soft silvery-white metallic alkali metal that oxidizes rapidly in air and is very reactive with water, generating sufficient heat to ignite the evolved hydrogen.
Potassium in nature occurs only as ionic salt. As such, it is found dissolved in seawater, and as part of many minerals. Potassium ion is necessary for the function of all living cells, and is thus present in all plant and animal tissues. It is found in especially high concentrations in plant cells, and in a mixed diet, it is most highly concentrated in fruits.
In many respects, potassium and sodium are chemically similar, although they have very different functions in organisms in general, and in animal cells in particular.
For more information about Potassium, read the full article at
Wikipedia.
This text uses material from Wikipedia and is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.
