Salts made easy
What is salt exactly?
When you talk about “salt”, you normally think of table salt. That’s no wonder then table salt is essential for human beings. In the past, it was very precious and not only gave several towns their name, but also made them rich, for example, Salzburg, Bad Salzuflen or Salzgitter. The German word for salt is “Salz. But Halle and Schwäbisch Hall also bear the other “white gold” in their names. The word “halla” is of Celtic origin and refers to a place where salt is distilled. And salt has also found its place in certain English phrases, for example, “He’s worth his salt”, or “She’s the salt of the earth”.
But salt is more than just sodium chloride, as it is referred to by chemists. No living creature can survive without such minerals as magnesium, calcium, potassium or phosphorous, or trace elements such as iron chrome, selenium or zinc to name but a few. We usually absorb them via our food. Marine animals, for example, are rich in iodine, eggs contain a lot of selenium, tea is rich in fluoride and meat contains zinc. What all these elements have in common is that they originally occurred as salts before they could be marshalled from the earth by plant roots or by plankton from the sea. The salt of life – this truly has a literal meaning. But what exactly is salt?
Salts: what the chemist meansSalt has many facesOrganic and inorganic ionsSolubility of saltsUtilization of magnesium salts in the body