Talk:Salt (chemistry)/Archive 1

Archive 1

Picture needed

Seems that a picture of table salt (from a salt shaker) would be useful here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 200.173.10.130 (talk) 23:39, 5 August 2003 (UTC)

• I disagree. This is a chemistry article about salts in general (ie. scientific), not table salt. We don't need to confuse audiences more than they already are. --nkayesmith 01:47, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

History removal

the page at first talks about salt in chemistry, but the history focuses on just the history of table salt. seeing as there is already a page about table salt and the history behind it, i feel that the history section on this page should be removed and merged with the table salt page. Craptree 15:46, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I agree and I had a go (Sodium_chloride#Salt_throughout_history) but folk should see if there's not too much info lost by removing this section. Chaikney 20:20, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

• We need an history section! BTW I need info on salt in the Roman Empire and in the middle Ages. The salt was as important as gold in the old times.-Pedro 13:54, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

• I agree with merging the section into table salt and/or sodium chloride, and removing it from this article. Assuming the section refers to sodium chloride, the "History" section seems out of place.--GregRM 16:54, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

• I agree too. I think users should be told that the section refers to sodium chloride at least. nkayesmith 01:45, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

• The history offered here should be merged into the history section of table salt. This article is about the term salt as referred to in chemistry. The "Salt" referred to in this article is a generic term. All of the information in the current history section of this article pertains to table salt. Therefore there should be no question about such a merge. --TRosenbaum 05:29, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

I have placed a merge suggestion in the section. If there is a history of salt section in this article, it should be suitably general, and, as others have noted above, the section appears to refer to edible salt.--GregRM 19:33, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

• I agree that this section does not at all fit with this page of salt as a chemical, rather than edible or table salt, and that it should definitely be moved/merged into that section.Jenpen 19:19, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

I have removed the following paragraph: "Salts are usually liquid silver with a relatively low melting point. However, there exist salts that are solid at room temperature, so-called ionic solids. Organic salts usually have a high softness and a high compressibility, similar to toxic salt]]." I hope the author of the removed fragment does not teach chemistry. 1) What is "liquid silver"? 2) MOST salts are solid at room temperature. 3) The salts with strong ionic bonds not only are solid at room temperature, they are solid even at high temperatures, eg. NaCl melts at 801 oC. 4) What is "toxic salt"! Yankeedoodle—Preceding unsigned comment added by yankeedoodle (talk • contribs)

I removed it all and moved it to Edible salt — Preceding unsigned comment added by Subsume (talk • contribs) 17:27, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

what is the density of salt?

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.236.63.14 (talk) 18:15, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

See Sodium chloride. — Preceding unsigned comment added by SebastianHelm (talk • contribs) 17:15, 24 June 2005 (UTC)

Need to sort out links

Whatlinkshere shows hundreds of links that obviously should link to edible salt (or table salt, if that were the main article name). I don't know what to do about it; manually renaming them is a lot of work, and it seems we have no easy way to automatically change a list of links. — Sebastian (talk) 17:15, 2005 Jun 24 (UTC)

Monatomic

the page says a salt is a compound composed of an anion and and a cation, and then goes on to say that monatomic salts exist. how is this possible? is this correct? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 12.148.146.227 (talk • contribs) .

It refers to the composition of one ionic part only, not to the salt as a whole. Femto 12:24, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Silting

I don't understand why silting redirects here. My understanding of silting is that it refers to the deposit of sediment by rivers. Don't see the connection. Ghmyrtle 14:08, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

what is a wine salt

please help me

anyone!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Matt derbyshire (talk • contribs) 17:28, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Shouldn't salt in the diet be here?

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.46.77.50 (talk) 10:55, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

There's nothing much to say in general about dietary use of salt that is relevant here...perhaps you should look at a different page? As the very first line of this page states: This article is about the general chemical term salt. For the everyday meaning, see edible salt or its main ingredient, sodium chloride. DMacks 13:18, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Basic Salts

As I said in the Alkali salt talk page, it says here that that a basic salt is a salt that contains a hydroxide ion, but calcium carbonate is considered a basic salt and does not. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.147.72.202 (talk) 20:39, 11 January 2007 (UTC).

I am not sure if this is a question, but I'll try and give a bit of explanation.

You already name salts containing OH^-, which are indeed clearly basic. On the other hand you have solids like oxalic acid, which are acidic, they contain H⁺. If you dissolve them, you clearly get basic or acidic solutions.

More difficult it gets with other salts. When you dissolve a salt in water, you get positive ions (cations) and negative ions (anions). Both anions and cations are surrounded by a water shell. Now we are going to compare the cation and the anion, so the next part is relative, not 'strict': if the cation has a large affinity for OH^-, then it will 'bind' the OH^--part of a water molecule, resulting in a bit H⁺-character of that dissolved cation. For anions the opposite is true, if they have a tendency to bind H⁺, the resulting dissolved anion will appear to be a bit basic (it contains a bit free OH^-. If the sum of these two is not in the middle, the pH will deviate from 7 (if the affinity of the cation for OH^- is (relatively) larger than the affinity of the anion for H⁺ then the solution will have a surplus of 'free' H⁺, resulting in a pH lower than 7, the solution will appear acidic.

This is also what happens in calcium carbonate, calcium has a reasonable affinity for OH^-, but CO₃^2- is in solution almost HCO₃^-, maybe even H₂CO3, so the anion tends to create OH^-. Hope this clarifies. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 21:02, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes. However, the salts themselves are still termed "basic" regardless of being dissolved or not, so the article's wording is not correct. I adjusted it slightly to include all oxyanionic things. DMacks 21:09, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Oh .. And now I have to dig really deep .. I think basic salts are salts that, when dissolved in water, result in a solution with a pH higher than 7 .. but .. pff .. this is years ago, and I don't have the appropriate books at hand. Ref's, anyone? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 21:13, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

That may indeed be the strict definition. To make wikipedia matters more confusing, we have specific pages for acid salt and alkali salt. I was basing my comment on common-names for things like "monobasic potassium phosphate". DMacks 22:36, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

(unindent) This lovely effect has a name .. I remember that I once, in a grey and long-forgotten past, had to calculate the magnitude of this effect, you can calculate that from certain data, even for NaCl, where the effect is minimal. It is certainly something wikipedia needs to have. I'll have to think, or hope for another chemist to come to the resque. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 22:42, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

• • Salts don't dissolve in water, they dissociate ** —Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.77.44.52 (talk) 19:31, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

"Impure salts"

What does "salts which have lost their saltiness" mean, in the description of "impure salts" in the lead paragraph? DMacks 21:10, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Nothing really. I have removed that sentence. The reference to natron did not mean much either. --Bduke 22:45, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

My edit on this and other points has been reverted by an anon editor who gave no reasons. I was trying to clarify various points and also correct errors. For example not all anions that contain oxygen lead to salts that are basic - sulfate for example. Could others keep an eye on this? I have reverted back to my version but do not want an edit war. --Bduke 04:07, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Move to salts

I believe the title should be changed from "Salt" to "Salts". That would better rweflect the subject being a general class of compounds, as opposed to the table salt.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Yankeedoodle (talk • contribs)

Uh, is someone going to fix the page? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.86.145.181 (talk • contribs).

Pushed it up to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chemistry for more discussion. Femto 12:42, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

• I agree that the article should be moved to Salts which is a redirect. It should be the other way - "Salt" a redirect to "Salts". --Bduke 22:45, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

• I could simply agree to this suggestion but to play devil's advocate: what about changing gas to gases or Ion to Ions or Candy bar to Candy Bars. I guess I don't see the benefit or consistency to this. Yes salt is more complicated due to table salt but that is what we have disambiguation for.--Nick Y. 02:21, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Vandalism?

This passage appears at the beginning of the article:

"Its salt duh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Japanese Texan ssssssssalt"

But it doesn't appear in the editable text. but Does it really belong here? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.64.252.10 (talk) 00:06, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Someone managed to fix it. DMacks (talk) 17:04, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

Proposed project

There is evidently no extant WikiProject which deals with articles concerning alloys and other chemical compounds. This could be a problem, as many of these articles deal with what are considered to be generally important topics. To correct this situation, I have proposed a project to deal with these articles at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals#Chemical compounds and mixtures. Anyone interested in contributing to such a project should indicate as much there. Thank you for your attention. John Carter 20:35, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was move from Salt to Salt (chemistry), and move Edible salt to Salt. A dablink at the top of Salt will direct users to Salt (disambiguation) for cases in which that is necessary. Dekimasuよ! 02:46, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

---

I think this article makes more sense to be located at Salt (chemistry) and that Sodium chloride belongs here. Who agrees or disagrees?Yeago 17:37, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

• Salt should be a DAB page. 132.205.44.134 21:15, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
• Support. And salt (disambiguation) should be a dab page, while edible salt should be moved to salt. --Yath 03:18, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

• Comment I was originally for moving edible salt to salt but I realized that the edible salt page should really be Edibility of salt because its really strictly an article about dietary uses. I think that makes sodium chloride the best candidate; its more comprehensive.Yeago 13:50, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

• Comment. The complexity is that edible salt is not exclusively NaCl, and furthermore the topic of what we consume is already broken up into subarticles (I think reasonably, at least regarding sodium chloride). Also, importantly, nobody looking for the topic of NaCl is going to be particulary thrown off if they run into an article on table salt after searching for "salt", but misleading can occur if those searching for table salt find an article on NaCl, as they may not know to look further for the additional particulars of table salt (e.g. NaI). ENeville 18:23, 20 May 2007 (UTC) (Edited May 21)

• Comm It may not be exclusively NaCl but, ahem, its basically just NaCl. I realize some 20th century makers have added iodine (relatively ignorable as far as history is concerned). But this really fails as a distinguishing trait. If you want to know my secret belief, its that Edible salt become a category of child article of sodium chloride. I like the Edible salt article, I just happen to think it would be better if it took a greater focus on dietary uses. You see I removed the History of salt section from that article in order to achieve this. After this gets moved I'm going to propose a merge, either way. So be thinking =)Yeago 13:14, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

• Comment. My secret belief is that the topic of "edible salt" should be identified as "table salt". =) ENeville 06:37, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

• Not all edible salt is table salt. There is also cooking salt, for example, which is usually coarser than table salt. Also, I disagree with Yeago that the edible salt article is only about the edibility of salt. It also covers the manufacture and composition of edible salt (which by the way does not only contain sodium chloride and iodide/iodate, but also anticaking agents). It is a distinct topic from sodium chloride, which discusses the properties of the pure compound and its uses in industry. --Itub 08:12, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

• Support. As Yath says. ENeville 04:22, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
• Comment. While you may be right that this is not the predominant usage of "salt", that would only mean that the disambiguation page (currently salt (disambiguation)) should be moved to salt, in the absence of a clear primary topic. Replacing one possible meaning with another directly is most unusual, and seems likely to cause confusion and a great many inappropriate links. I don't normally take too much notice of incoming links when considering a move request, but in this case there are hundreds and hundreds of incoming links (~2,000), each of which would need to be checked manually, since many of them may well be pointing to other meanings of "salt" already. I can't see any way of automating that, and I would want to see some willingness of the part of the proponent to make those changes (although it would probably need to be done even in the absence of a move). Finally, I think there is value in having the article on "salt" at the broader of the two meanings, i.e. any compound produced by a reaction between an acid and a base, rather than the very specific compound produced by one particular reaction. I can't find any specific mention of that principle in the naming conventions, but it seems reasonable. --Stemonitis 05:46, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

• Comm. It will take work but it should have been done right to begin with. Let's fix it before its ~4,000 incoming links.Yeago 13:04, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

• Comment. I strongly agree. Unwillingness to move an article because of existing links will promote claim-staking in future articles, and as such is a worrisome policy. Wikipedia is fundamentally dynamic, and pursuit of the best body of information should be the polestar. ENeville 18:23, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

• Support per Yath. "Salt" has a 12,000+ year history as being sodium chloride. While I agree there are other relatively minor uses, they can go in a disambig title.Yeago 13:04, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
• Support. Although traditional encyclopedic practice gives greater weight to chemical or biological taxonomic uses of common terms, there is no reason these should be inherently be considered more important than other uses (e.g. culinary, historical). Salt is a particularly good example. —  AjaxSmack  01:16, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
• Weak support .. this article may be better at salt (chemistry), but I oppose that sodium chloride should be here. Salt could turn into a disambiguation page (see also wikt:salt). Although 'salt' commonly denotes 'sodium chloride' a salt is not by definition sodium chloride. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 13:28, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose moving Sodium chloride here, but support moving Salt (disambiguation) here and moving this page to Salt (chemistry). Besides the fact that I'm not convinced that sodium chloride is more "primary" than the chemical concept of salt, looking at it pragmatically, many of the links that point to this page are wrong. People link to salt all the time without thinking if it contains what they meant. The same problem would occur if we put sodium chloride here. By turning it into a disambiguation page, all the links would at least be partly right, and we would also give more prominence to other meanings of the word. --Itub 14:50, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Interesting point, Itub. But do you think its ok to change an article simply because people mis-link to it?Yeago 19:00, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

No, I see that merely as a symptom. The cause in my opinion is that there is no universally obvious expectation for the content of an article called salt. That's why it should be replaced by a disambiguation page. --Itub 20:11, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

• Support for various moves, resulting in:
  • Salt = redirect to Salt (disambiguation)
  • Edible salt, as is, about edible salt. Note: the term edible salt is not about just any salt that happens to be edible, but is the food enhancer consisting of mostly sodium chloride
  • Salt (chemistry), (now Salt) about all chemical salts, e.g., potassium citrate and sodium sulfate
  • Sodium chloride, as it, about the chemical compound sodium chloride
• Wim van Dorst (Talk) 21:07, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

• My suggestion is that edible salt be moved to salt because "edible salt" sounds very strange. Hatnotes can be used for disambiguation, with a separate salt (disambiguation) because the most important definitions of salt are quite obvious. Salt can be moved to Salt (chemistry) because it is specialized (though I would definitely disagree with this definition being "minor"). --Rifleman 82 02:23, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
• I agree that what is now edible salt should come here: this is the most common usage of the term "salt" in English. The current article about the chemical term should be moved to salt (chemistry) and salt (disambiguation should stay where it is. Physchim62 (talk) 16:45, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

requires a bit more

i dunno.....but i feel we need some more details about salts in diet

further more, seeing as there are sperate article for acid and basic salt, maybe we shouls rename this to normal salt??

oh, and do you think we should include a small overview of salt hydrolysis

whar about its other general charecterstsics?

edit: okay, nvr mind, i noticed tht the other things have dedicated articles —Preceding unsigned comment added by 221.135.206.99 (talk) 12:40, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Effects on weather/snowfall removal

Not knowing which was the proper article, this one or salt to include its use concerning weather, I've included a section in both articles. Thegreatdr (talk) 14:45, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Definition needs work

I think the definition of "salt" may need improvement. In effect, what it says is that any chemical compound is a "salt" if it satisfies all of the following conditions:

(1) Is an ionic compound composed of cations and anions; and (2) Is electrically neutral (without a net charge).

Anything that satisfies those 2 conditions is, according to the definition, a "salt." Is that accurate? It seems very broad.

It also says that a salt "can" result from the neutralization reaction of acids. This cannot form part of the definition, because it does not distinguish between acid neutralization reactions that do and do not result in salt products. For that statement to be meaningful at all, the definition must specify the classes of acid neutralization reactions that produce salts and those that do not.

149.169.253.110 (talk) 21:20, 3 February 2010 (UTC)ProfessorF

I agree that the definition needs work but since your comment is 5+ years old I guess others do not agree. I suggest that definition start with a sentence that requires even less understanding of chemistry such as "a combination of both positive and negative ions such that the net charge is neutral (neither positive or negative)". I would go on to say that "table salt is one example of such a compound however, not all salts are edible". Arbalest Mike (talk) 21:30, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

Manganese dioxide and definition

The article uses manganese dioxide as an example of a salt but from the structure on its own page (and from intuition!) it is clearly a covalent oxide, not a salt. Neither is iron(III) oxide. Besides, the current definition really needs improvement. A common textbook definition of salt is an ionic compound which contains a conjungate base of an acid and a metallic cation or an ammonium-like cation (e.g. pyridinium). One can see that oxides are usually deliberately avoided in these definitions. (Water usually doesn't qualify as an acid anyway.) Zhieaanm (talk) 05:53, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Color/Colour

Someone keeps changing the section heading to the British spelling, and without edit comments. Is there some justification for this? Rather than continuing to revert this edit I would like to know if there is a reason it leave it as is. The American spelling is used for all other occurrences of the word so if there is justification for the British spelling it should be used consistently. This change is done via a raw IP address so I can't take this up directly with the editor. Arbalest Mike (talk) 13:45, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

Changed and reverted again. Comments anybody? Arbalest Mike (talk) 02:19, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

WP:ENGVAR. If article is has been consistent and long-standing US spelling and the topic itself is not substantially British spelling, then US spelling is how it goes. DMacks (talk) 02:34, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

quartenary ammonium salts

Quartenary ammonium salts like tetrabutylammonium bromide or Aliquat 336 result from the reaction between an amine (a basic species) and an alkyl halide -- which isn't a Bronsted acid. Thus, do we expand the definition in the lead to include the Lewis acids and bases? Yanping Nora Soong (talk) 05:34, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

The definition doesn't say that the chemical must only be formed by this type reaction, or that this method is how one would usually make it in a lab. See for example all the other methods in the Salt (chemistry)#Formation section. In your case, you are focusing on forming the cationic component itself, not the reaction among ions. Compare:

HBr + TBAOH → TBABr + H₂O

(acid + base) gives (salt + water), treating "TBA" as a constant species. DMacks (talk) 11:28, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Salt (chemistry)/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

I believe there may be an error in the phrase: "may smell after the conjugate acid (e.g. acetates like acetic acid (vinegar) and cyanides like hydrogen cyanide (almonds))" since I believe that an acetate is a conjugate base, not a conjugate acid. Acetate is the ionic form after acetic acid has given up its proton, thus it is no longer an acid but a conjugate base. Perhaps someone confident in their chemistry could edit this section to make corrections.

Last edited at 02:33, 26 March 2009 (UTC). Substituted at 05:18, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

new sweet salt

Surely there is some salt that we can give as an example for sweet that isn't poisonous? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 116.240.232.12 (talk) 09:15, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

Possible definition typo

Does the definition really mean "sold" not "solid"? I think it's a typo. The cited IUPAC source doesn't include either term. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.198.106.22 (talk) 18:36, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

Good catch! A recent IP changed "solid" to "sold", but I removed it altogether because, as you note, it's not supported by the cited ref. The article even mentions that in uncommon cases salts can be liquids at room temperature. DMacks (talk) 03:26, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

Hydrolysis in Odor section?

The last sentence in the Odor section not only doesn't make much sense but doesn't appear to be related to odor: "That[???] slow, partial decomposition is usually accelerated by the presence of water, since hydrolysis is the other half of the reversible reaction equation of formation of weak salts." Jojalozzo (talk) 21:08, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

Sodium acetate strong and weak?

The ‘strong salts’ subsection describes salts with a sodium, potassium or ammonium cation or nitrate, perchlorate or acetate anions as strong… and right after that the one example of a *weak* salt is sodium acetate. ? Harsimaja (talk) 18:10, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

Requested move 26 December 2022

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. There is consensus against the move. (closed by non-admin page mover) echidnaLives - talk - edits 02:38, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

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Salt (chemistry) → Salts – Per WP:SMALLDETAILS and WP:NATURALDISAMBIGUATION. "Salts" already redirects here, so it's already considered to be the primary meaning, and this move will eliminate the need for a parenthetical disambiguator in the title. Rreagan007 (talk) 21:53, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose. WP:NCPLURAL does not allow for the use of plural purely for disambiguation purposes, unless the plural title would otherwise be preferred for its own sake. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 19:57, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose like Oranges, Crickets and Hamlets. Also Britannica uses the singular. Crouch, Swale (talk) 19:15, 28 December 2022 (UTC)
• Support because I think WP:PLURALPT is wrong on this one (and I wrote it), and I'd like to see it changed. The proposed target is more concise and is more naturally disambiguated. Red Slash 23:24, 31 December 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose. A salt is a distinct chemical concept, so we need to use the singular here- no reason to wander from WP:SINGULAR. Mdewman6 (talk) 23:07, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Water a salt?

Is water a salt, as it is formed from a hydronium cation and hydroxide anion reacting?

H+ + OH- --> H2O

It also has neutral pH of 7; therefore, would it be defined as a salt? The article includes 'ionic compound' in the definition of salt, but I am not sure...please explain. Thanks! Akhi666 20:03, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

The actual bonds in water molecules are not ionic even though it can decompose into ions 46.193.224.190 (talk) 16:50, 11 March 2023 (UTC)