What's the difference between baking soda and baking powder? Short answer: acid. But it can make a big difference for baked goods, so let's explain.
Materials Science
May 22, 2014
6
39
Most of today's batteries are made up of rare lithium mined from the mountains of South America. If the world depletes this source, then battery production could stagnate.
Energy & Green Tech
Sep 19, 2018
4
1559
Electric organs help electric fish, such as the electric eel, do all sorts of amazing things: They send and receive signals that are akin to bird songs, helping them to recognize other electric fish by species, sex and even ...
Plants & Animals
Jun 1, 2022
2
699
(Phys.org) -- As a rising global population and increasing standard of living drive demand for freshwater, many researchers are developing new techniques to desalinate salt water. Among them is a team of scientists from The ...
(Phys.org)—As lithium resources continue to decline worldwide, the next generation of portable electronics will most likely be powered by something other than Li-ion batteries. One potential candidate is the sodium-ion ...
(PhysOrg.com) -- One of the biggest challenges currently facing large-scale solar energy technology is finding an effective way to store the energy, which is essential for using the electricity at night or on cloudy days.
In 1998, the journal Nature published a seminal letter concluding that a mysterious signal, which had been discovered while analyzing the polarization of sunlight, implies that the solar chromosphere (an important layer of ...
Astronomy
Aug 19, 2021
79
3875
An expedition into the jungle of New Guinea has resulted in the discovery of two new species of poisonous birds by researchers from the University of Copenhagen. Genetic changes in these bird species have allowed them to ...
Ecology
Mar 31, 2023
0
788
Travel deep enough below Earth's surface or inside the center of the sun, and matter changes on an atomic level.
Materials Science
Dec 30, 2023
0
656
(PhysOrg.com) -- When a river flows into the sea, the location is more than just a haven for water commerce. The mixing of fresh and salt water that occurs at an estuary also dissipates energy, as the different salinity waters ...
Sodium (pronounced /ˈsoʊdiəm/) is a metallic element with a symbol Na (from Latin natrium or Arabic natrun) and atomic number 11. It is a soft, silvery-white, highly reactive metal and is a member of the alkali metals within "group 1" (formerly known as ‘group IA’). It has only one stable isotope, 23Na.
Elemental sodium was first isolated by Sir Humphry Davy in 1806 by passing an electric current through molten sodium hydroxide. Elemental sodium does not occur naturally on Earth, but quickly oxidizes in air and is violently reactive with water, so it must be stored in an inert medium, such as a liquid hydrocarbon. The free metal is used for some chemical synthesis and heat transfer applications.
Sodium ion is soluble in water in nearly all of its compounds, and is thus present in great quantities in the Earth's oceans and other stagnant bodies of water. In these bodies it is mostly counterbalanced by the chloride ion, causing evaporated ocean water solids to consist mostly of sodium chloride, or common table salt. Sodium ion is also a component of many minerals.
Sodium is an essential element for all animal life and for some plant species. In animals, sodium ions are used in opposition to potassium ions, to allow the organism to build up an electrostatic charge on cell membranes, and thus allow transmission of nerve impulses when the charge is allowed to dissipate by a moving wave of voltage change. Sodium is thus classified as a “dietary inorganic macro-mineral” for animals. Sodium's relative rarity on land is due to its solubility in water, thus causing it to be leached into bodies of long-standing water by rainfall. Such is its relatively large requirement in animals, in contrast to its relative scarcity in many inland soils, that herbivorous land animals have developed a special taste receptor for sodium ion.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA
