SALT

 (SODIUM CLORIDE)

INTRODUCTION

Salt is important. Salt has more importance than we think. Salt is a biological necessity of human life. But we live our daily lives practically unaware of this basic biological fact. We can't live without it. Our tears, blood and sweat taste of salt. Salt runs through our language, our history, and our veins. Human beings have an intimate relationship with salt. Salt (Sodium Chloride) The sodium it contains is helping maintain the fluid in your blood cells and transmitting electrical impulses between your brain and your nerves and muscles. The chloride is essential to your food digestion Salt is always interesting, even if you don't think so. Salt was in use long before recorded history. The chemical reactions inside our bodies need sodium – one of the two elements that make up salt (with chloride).We can't survive without sodium, but it was about five million years before humans began to eat their sodium as salt. The physiological requirement by the human body is immediate and life sustaining without salt any animal including the human animal would die & the importance of salt to any civilisation may not be underestimated.

Salt is as vital to human existence as air and water. The physiological requirement by the human body is immediate and life sustaining. Without salt any animal including the human would die and the importance of salt to any civilisation may not be underestimated. In comparison, many other everyday uses are today, taken for granted. In ancient times, before any chemical analysis was possible, experience and wisdom, was necessary to discern the purity of the salt for use with the many every day specific applications. To sustain a growing population, more salt was required. The fact that salt may have been available or was relatively easy to produce was a basic condition, which allowed a population to increase and develop. Where salt was not available...Populations stagnated and even disintegrated.
We may not be aware that salt used in some 14,000 commercial applications. From manufacturing pulp and paper to setting dyes in textiles and fabric, from producing soaps and detergents to making our roads safe in winter, salt plays an essential role in our daily lives. Salt has a long and influential role in world history.

What is salt?
Sodium chloride or common salt is the chemical compound NaCl, composed of the elements sodium and chloride. Salt occurs naturally in many parts of the world as the mineral halite and as mixed evaporates in salt lakes.  Seawater has lots of salt; it contains an average of 2.7% (by weight) NaCl, or 78 million metric tons per cubic kilometre, an inexhaustible supply (note: seawater also contains other dissolved solids; salt represents about 77% of the Total Dissolved Solids). Underground salt deposits are found in both bedded. Sedimentary layers and domal deposits.  Deposits have been found to have encapsulated ancient micro organisms including bacteria.  Some salt is one the surface, the dried-up residue of ancient seas like the famed Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah.  Salt even arrives on earth from outer space in meteors and its presence on the planet Mars makes scientists think life may exist there (in fact, scientists speculate that salt-loving bacteria live in underground water on Mars -- as they have survived in suspended animation for 250 million years in Texas).Conversely, surface salt depositions and man-made salt works can be seen from space.  In ocean coastal areas, saltwater can "intrude" on underground freshwater supplies, complicating the lives of those who provide our drinking water supplies.

Sodium chloride crystals are cubic in form. Table salt consists of tiny cubes tightly bound together through ionic bonding of the sodium and chloride ions. The salt crystal is often used as an example of crystalline structure.  It can be modified by temperature.  Many online science pages offer instruction on growing salt crystals.Other graphics of salt crystals are also available online. And salt crystals have been photographed under a microscope Different types of crystal have different uses, as for food. It varies in colour from colourless, when pure, to white, grey or brownish, typical of rock salt (halite). Chemically, it is 60.663% elemental chlorine (Cl) and 39.337% sodium (Na). The atomic weight of elemental chlorine is 35.4527 and that of sodium is 22.989768.  

Read More:
● Properties of Salt
● Salt Uses
● Chemicals From Salt
● The Economics of Salt