| Discovery date | 1807 |
| Discovered by | Humphry Davy |
| Origin of the name | The name is derived from the English word 'soda'. |
| Allotropes |
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Na
Sodium
11
22.990
| Group | 1 | Melting point | 97.794°C, 208.029°F, 370.944 K |
| Period | 3 | Boiling point | 882.940°C, 1621.292°F, 1156.090 K |
| Block | s | Density (g cm−3) | 0.97 |
| Atomic number | 11 | Relative atomic mass | 22.990 |
| State at 20°C | Solid | Key isotopes | 23Na |
| Electron configuration | [Ne] 3s1 | CAS number | 7440-23-5 |
| ChemSpider ID | 4514534 | ChemSpider is a free chemical structure database | |
Image explanation
The two lines in a circle represents sodium, and is one of the element symbols developed by John Dalton in the 19th century. The orange glow is like the colour of sodium street lighting and the spiked ‘flash’ symbol reflects the element's high reactivity.
Appearance
Sodium is a soft metal that tarnishes within seconds of being exposed to the air. It also reacts vigorously with water.
Uses
Sodium is used as a heat exchanger in some nuclear reactors, and as a reagent in the chemicals industry. But sodium salts have more uses than the metal itself.
The most common compound of sodium is sodium chloride (common salt). It is added to food and used to de-ice roads in winter. It is also used as a feedstock for the chemical industry.
Sodium carbonate (washing soda) is also a useful sodium salt. It is used as a water softener.
Biological role
Sodium is essential to all living things, and humans have known this since prehistoric times. Our bodies contain about 100 grams, but we are constantly losing sodium in different ways so we need to replace it. We can get all the sodium we need from our food, without adding any extra. The average person eats about 10 grams of salt a day, but all we really need is about 3 grams. Any extra sodium may contribute to high blood pressure. Sodium is important for many different functions of the human body. For example, it helps cells to transmit nerve signals and regulate water levels in tissues and blood.
Natural abundance
Sodium is the sixth most common element on Earth, and makes up 2.6% of the Earth’s crust. The most common compound is sodium chloride. This very soluble salt has been leached into the oceans over the lifetime of the planet, but many salt beds or ‘lakes’ are found where ancient seas have evaporated. It is also found in many minerals including cryolite, zeolite and sodalite.
Because sodium is so reactive it is never found as the metal in nature. Sodium metal is produced by electrolysis of dry molten sodium chloride.
Salt (sodium chloride, NaCl) and soda (sodium carbonate, Na2CO3) had been known since prehistoric times, the former used as a flavouring and preservative, and the latter for glass manufacture. Salt came from seawater, while soda came from the Natron Valley in Egypt or from the ash of certain plants. Their composition was debated by early chemists and the solution finally came from the Royal Institution in London in October 1807 where Humphry Davy exposed caustic soda (sodium hydroxide, NaOH) to an electric current and obtained globules of sodium metal, just as he had previously done for potassium, although he needed to use a stronger current.
The following year, Louis-Josef Gay-Lussac and Louis-Jacques Thénard obtained sodium by heating to red heat a mixture of caustic soda and iron filings.
| Atomic radius, non-bonded (Å) | 2.27 | Covalent radius (Å) | 1.60 |
| Electron affinity (kJ mol−1) | 52.867 |
Electronegativity (Pauling scale) |
0.93 |
|
Ionisation energies (kJ mol−1) |
1st
495.845
2nd
4562.444
3rd
6910.28
4th
9543.36
5th
13353.6
6th
16612.85
7th
20117.2
8th
25496.25
|
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| Common oxidation states | 1 | ||||
| Isotopes | Isotope | Atomic mass | Natural abundance (%) | Half life | Mode of decay |
| 23Na | 22.990 | 100 | - | - | |
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Specific heat capacity (J kg−1 K−1) |
1228 | Young's modulus (GPa) | Unknown | |||||||||||
| Shear modulus (GPa) | Unknown | Bulk modulus (GPa) | 6.3 | |||||||||||
| Vapour pressure | ||||||||||||||
| Temperature (K) |
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| Pressure (Pa) |
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| Listen to Sodium Podcast |
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Transcript :
Chemistry in its element: sodium(Promo) You're listening to Chemistry in its element brought to you by Chemistry World, the magazine of the Royal Society of Chemistry. (End promo) Meera Senthilingam This week an essential element with a split personality. Here's David Read. David Read Sodium, like most elements in the periodic table could be said to have a dual personality. On one side it is an essential nutrient for most living things, and yet, due to its reactive nature is also capable of wreaking havoc if you happen to combine it with something you shouldn't. As such sodium is found naturally only in compounds and never as the free element. Even so it is highly abundant, accounting for around 2.6 per cent of the earths crust by weight. Its most common compounds include dissolved sodium chloride (or table salt), its solid form, halite and as a charge balancing cation in zeolites. Aside from being an essential nutrient, the story of man and sodium is said to begin all the way back in the time of the Pharaohs in Ancient Egypt, with the first recorded mention of a sodium compound in the form of hieroglyphics. It is difficult to describe a pictogram through speech but imagine a squiggly line over the top of a hollow eye-shape, over the top of a semicircle, with a left-facing vulture image next to them all. This pictogram meant divine or pure and its name is the root of the word natron, which was used to refer to washing soda, or sodium carbonate decahydrate, as we would know it today. Sodium carbonate was used in soap, and also, in the process of mummification thanks to its water absorbing and bacteria killing pH control properties. In medieval Europe, however, sodium carbonate was also used as a cure for headaches, and so took the name sodanum, from the Arabic suda, meaning headache. It was this terminology that inspired Sir Humphrey Davy to call the element sodium when he first isolated it by passing an electric current through caustic soda, or sodium hydroxide, in 1807. This process is known as electrolysis and using it Davy went on to isolate elemental potassium, calcium, magnesium and barium by a very similar method. Chemistry teachers often confuse children when they tell them about chemical symbols. Whilst ones like H, N, C and O all seem perfectly logical, abbreviating sodium to Na seems counterintuitive at first. However, if we consider the word natron, we can see where the abbreviated form came from. When isolated in metallic form, silvery white sodium is a violent element, immediately oxidising upon contact with air, and violently producing hydrogen gas which may burst into flame when brought into contact with water. It is one of the highly reactive group one elements that are named the alkali metals. Like the other alkali metals, it has a very distinctive flame test - a bright orange colour, from the D-line emission. This is something you will have seen in all built up areas in the form of street lamps, which use sodium to produce the unnatural yellow light bathing our streets. This effect was first noted in 1860 by Kirchoff and Bunsen of Bunsen Burner fame. Almost all young chemists will have done a flame test at some point, and sodium chloride is a popular choice. Unfortunately, the intensity of the colour is such that if any of the compound is spilled into the Bunsen burner, it is cursed to burn with a blue and orange speckled flame seemingly forever. The reaction of sodium with water is a favourite demonstration, and clips of it abound on the internet. Sodium and its compounds have applications so diverse it would be impossible to mention them all here, a couple of examples include the fact that sodium is used to cool nuclear reactors, since it won't boil as water would at the high temperatures that are reached. Sodium hydroxide can be used to remove sulfur from petrol and diesel, although the toxic soup of by-products that is formed has led to the process being outlawed in most countries. Sodium hydroxide is also used in biodiesel manufacture, and as a key component in products that remove blockages from drains. Baking soda actually contains sodium (it's in the name!) and its chemical name is sodium bicarbonate, where I'm sure you've come across it in baking or cooking where it undergoes thermal decomposition at above 70°C to release carbon dioxide - which then makes your dough rise. It is as an ion, however, that sodium really becomes important. An average human being has to take in around two grams of sodium a day - and virtually all of this will be taken in the form of salt in the diet. Sodium ions are used to build up electrical gradients in the firing of neurons in the brain. This involves sodium (and its big brother potassium) diffusing through cell membranes. Sodium diffuses in and is pumped back out, while potassium does the reverse journey. This can take up a huge amount of the body's energy - sometimes as much as 40 per cent. I'd like to end with a brief story which highlights the dual personality of sodium. One man bought three and a half pounds of sodium metal from the internet and spent the evening reacting it with water in various shapes and sizes whilst he and his friends watched from a safe distance. The party was apparently a success, but he doesn't suggest hosting your own. The following day when the host came outside to check the area where he detonated the sodium was clear, he noticed that it was covered in swarms of yellow butterflies. After doing some research, he found that these butterflies had an interesting habit. The males search for sodium and gradually collect it, presenting it to their mates later as a ritual. So, that sums up the two faces of sodium. Its violent reactive nature contrasted with its use by amorous butterflies. Meera Senthilingam That was Southampton university's David Read with the two faced chemistry of sodium. Now next week, the chemical equivalent of train spotting. Brian Clegg It's easy to accuse the scientists who produce new, very heavy elements of being chemistry's train spotters. Just as train spotters spend hours watching for a particular locomotive so they can underline it in their book, it may seem that these chemists laboriously produce an atom or two of a superheavy element as an exercise in ticking the box. But element 114 has provided more than one surprise, showing why such elements are well worth investigating. Meera Senthilingam And to find out why element 114 is worth the effort join Brian Clegg in next week's Chemistry in its element. (Promo) Chemistry in its element is brought to you by the Royal Society of Chemistry and produced by thenakedscientists.com. There's more information and other episodes of Chemistry in its element on our website at chemistryworld.org/elements. (End promo)
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Visual Elements images and videos
© Murray Robertson 1998-2017.
W. M. Haynes, ed., CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, CRC Press/Taylor and Francis, Boca Raton, FL, 95th Edition, Internet Version 2015, accessed December 2014.
Tables of Physical & Chemical Constants, Kaye & Laby Online, 16th edition, 1995. Version 1.0 (2005), accessed December 2014.
J. S. Coursey, D. J. Schwab, J. J. Tsai, and R. A. Dragoset, Atomic Weights and Isotopic Compositions (version 4.1), 2015, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD, accessed November 2016.
T. L. Cottrell, The Strengths of Chemical Bonds, Butterworth, London, 1954.
John Emsley, Nature’s Building Blocks: An A-Z Guide to the Elements, Oxford University Press, New York, 2nd Edition, 2011.
Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility - Office of Science Education, It’s Elemental - The Periodic Table of Elements, accessed December 2014.
Periodic Table of Videos, accessed December 2014.
Derived in part from material provided by the British Geological Survey © NERC.
Elements 1-112, 114, 116 and 117 © John Emsley 2012. Elements 113, 115, 117 and 118 © Royal Society of Chemistry 2017.
Produced by The Naked Scientists.
Created by video journalist Brady Haran working with chemists at The University of Nottingham.
© Murray Robertson 1998-2017.
Data
W. M. Haynes, ed., CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, CRC Press/Taylor and Francis, Boca Raton, FL, 95th Edition, Internet Version 2015, accessed December 2014.
Tables of Physical & Chemical Constants, Kaye & Laby Online, 16th edition, 1995. Version 1.0 (2005), accessed December 2014.
J. S. Coursey, D. J. Schwab, J. J. Tsai, and R. A. Dragoset, Atomic Weights and Isotopic Compositions (version 4.1), 2015, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD, accessed November 2016.
T. L. Cottrell, The Strengths of Chemical Bonds, Butterworth, London, 1954.
Uses and properties
John Emsley, Nature’s Building Blocks: An A-Z Guide to the Elements, Oxford University Press, New York, 2nd Edition, 2011.
Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility - Office of Science Education, It’s Elemental - The Periodic Table of Elements, accessed December 2014.
Periodic Table of Videos, accessed December 2014.
Supply risk data
Derived in part from material provided by the British Geological Survey © NERC.
History text
Elements 1-112, 114, 116 and 117 © John Emsley 2012. Elements 113, 115, 117 and 118 © Royal Society of Chemistry 2017.
Podcasts
Produced by The Naked Scientists.
Periodic Table of Videos
Created by video journalist Brady Haran working with chemists at The University of Nottingham.
