Engineering
Lithium cobalt oxide is a layered metal oxide that has attracted great attention to develop rechargeable batteries. Sodium-ion batteries can store grid-scale energy due to the natural abundance of sodium. The composition ...
Energy & Green Tech
The lithium batteries that power electronic devices and electric vehicles have a number of drawbacks. The electrolyte—the medium that enables electrons and positive charges to move between the electrodes—is a flammable ...
Oct 13, 2020
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47
Consumer & Gadgets
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Aug 10, 2020
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Energy & Green Tech
Scientists from Skoltech and Moscow State University (MSU) identified the type of electrochemical reaction associated with charge storage in the anode material for sodium-ion batteries (SIB), a new promising class of electrochemical ...
Jul 21, 2020
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Engineering
Last year, MIT engineers developed a double-sided adhesive that could quickly and firmly stick to wet surfaces such as biological tissues. They showed that the tape could be used to seal up rips and tears in lungs and intestines ...
Jun 22, 2020
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225
Energy & Green Tech
Washington State University (WSU) and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) researchers have created a sodium-ion battery that holds as much energy and works as well as some commercial lithium-ion battery chemistries, ...
Jun 1, 2020
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Energy & Green Tech
The diamonds and other crystals on view in science museum exhibits are a delight to the eye. What contributes to their sometimes dazzling geometric shapes and colors is their highly ordered arrangement of atoms. For the crystalline ...
May 4, 2020
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172
Engineering
Wearable sensors that track heart rate or steps are popular fitness products. But in the future, working up a good sweat could provide useful information about a person's health. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Applied ...
Dec 18, 2019
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2
Engineering
A team of researchers from Tsinghua University and Northwest University, both in China, has developed a patch that can be used to measure six health-related biomarkers by analyzing sweat. In their paper published in the journal ...
Energy & Green Tech
Scientists have created an "artificial leaf" to fight climate change by inexpensively converting harmful carbon dioxide (CO2) into a useful alternative fuel.
Nov 4, 2019
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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.
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