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Sodium is a chemical element; it has symbol Na (from Neo-Latin natrium) and atomic number 11. It is a soft, silvery-white, highly reactive metal. Sodium is an alkali metal, being in group 1 of the periodic table. Its only stable isotope is 23 Na. The free metal does not occur in nature and must be prepared from compounds.
Sodium forms alloys with many metals, such as potassium, calcium, lead, and the group 11 and 12 elements. Sodium and potassium form KNa 2 and NaK. NaK is 40–90% potassium and it is liquid at ambient temperature. It is an excellent thermal and electrical conductor.
Most of the sodium in the Western diet comes from salt. [6] The habitual salt intake in many Western countries is about 10 g per day, and it is higher than that in many countries in Eastern Europe and Asia. [64] The high level of sodium in many processed foods has a major impact on the total amount consumed. [65]
Potassium makes up approximately 1.5% of the Earth's crust and is the seventh most abundant element. [51] Sodium is found in many different minerals, of which the most common is ordinary salt (sodium chloride), which occurs in vast quantities dissolved in seawater. Other solid deposits include halite, amphibole, cryolite, nitratine, and zeolite ...
A chemical element, often simply called an element, is a type of atom which has a specific number of protons in its atomic nucleus (i.e., a specific atomic number, or Z). [ 1 ] The definitive visualisation of all 118 elements is the periodic table of the elements , whose history along the principles of the periodic law was one of the founding ...
Starting from element 11, sodium, the second shell is full, making the second shell a core shell for this and all heavier elements. The eleventh electron begins the filling of the third shell by occupying a 3s orbital, giving a configuration of 1s 2 2s 2 2p 6 3s 1 for sodium.
Sodium-23 is an isotope of sodium with an atomic mass of 22.98976928. It is the only stable isotope of sodium and also the only primordial isotope. Because of its abundance, sodium-23 is used in nuclear magnetic resonance in various research fields, including materials science and battery research. [ 8 ]
Davy was a pioneer in the field of electrolysis using the voltaic pile to split common compounds and thus prepare many new elements. He went on to electrolyse molten salts and discovered several new metals, including sodium and potassium, highly reactive elements known as the alkali metals.