what is the source or origin of salts?
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A salt is an ionic compound that is composed of a metal and non-metal. \nThere are many different kinds of salts. Table salt, the kind you put on food is Sodium Chloride (NaCl) and it can be found in concentrations in the Earth known as "salt domes" or derived from sea salt or halite formations.\n\nSea salt, another kind of salt commonly used in cooking, has varying compositions depending on where it is harvested but generally contains more chloride than sodium and has trace amounts of sulfites, calcium, and other metals. These metals are not in pure form, but combined chemically with non-metals.\n\nSalts can be the byproduct of a chemical reaction as is often the case when an acid and base are mixed. The base and acid neutralize to form, among other things, a salt in an aqueous solution. Many salts are poisonous to humans. \n\nFor more information go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt
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In chemistry, a salt is any ionic compound composed of positively charged cations and negatively charged anions so that the product is neutral and without a net charge. These ions can be inorganic (Cl−) as well as organic (CH3COO−) and monoatomic (F−) as well as polyatomic ions (SO42−).\n\nSalts are formed when acids and bases react.\n\nSolutions of salts in water are called electrolytes. Electrolytes as well as molten salts conduct electricity.\n\nZwitterions are salts that contain an anionic center and a cationic center in the same molecule; examples include amino acids, many metabolites, peptides and proteins.\n\nMixtures of many different ions in solution like in the cytoplasm of cells, in blood, urine, plant saps and mineral waters usually do not form defined salts after evaporation of the water. Therefore, their salt content is given for the respective ions.
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(m)\n\nEveryone who has been to the beach knows that seawater is salty. Everyone also knows that fresh water in rain, rivers, and even ice is not salty. Why are some of Earth’s waters salty and others not? There are two clues that give us the answer. First, “fresh” water is not entirely free of dissolved salt. Even rainwater has traces of substances dissolved in it that were picked up during passage through the atmosphere. Much of this material that “washes out” of the atmosphere today is pollution, but there are also natural substances present.\n\nAs rainwater passes through soil and percolates through rocks, it dissolves some of the minerals, a process called weathering. This is the water we drink, and of course, we cannot taste the salt because its concentration is too low. Eventually, this water with its small load of dissolved minerals or salts reaches a stream and flows into lakes and the ocean. The annual addition of dissolved salts by rivers is only a tiny fraction of the total salt in the ocean. The dissolved salts carried by all the world’s rivers would equal the salt in the ocean in about 200 to 300 million years.\n\nA second clue to how the sea became salty is the presence of salt lakes such as the Great Salt Lake and the Dead Sea. Both are about 10 times saltier than seawater. Why are these lakes salty while most of the world’s lakes are not? Lakes are temporary storage areas for water. Rivers and streams bring water to the lakes, and other rivers carry water out of lakes. Thus, lakes are really only wide depressions in a river channel that have filled with water. Water flows in one end and out the other. \n\nThe Great Salt Lake, Dead Sea, and other salt lakes have no outlets. All the water that flows into these lakes escapes only by evaporation. When water evaporates, the dissolved salts are left behind. So a few lakes are salty because rivers carried salts to the lakes, the water in the lakes evaporated and the salts were left behind. After years and years of river inflow and evaporation, the salt content of the lake water built up to the present levels. The same process made the seas salty. Rivers carry dissolved salts to the ocean. Water evaporates from the oceans to fall again as rain and to feed the rivers, but the salts remain in the ocean. Because of the huge volume of the oceans, hundreds of millions of years of river input were required for the salt content to build to its present level. \n\nRivers are not the only source of dissolved salts. About twenty years ago, features on the crest of oceanic ridges were discovered that modified our view on how the sea became salty. These features, known as hydrothermal vents, represent places on the ocean floor where sea water that has seeped into the rocks of the oceanic crust, has become hotter, and has dissolved some of the minerals from the crust, now flows back into the ocean. With the hot water comes a large complement of dissolved minerals. Estimates of the amount of hydrothermal fluids now flowing from these vents indicate that the entire volume of the oceans could seep through the oceanic crust in about 10 million years. Thus, this process has a very important effect on salinity. The reactions between seawater and oceanic basalt, the rock of ocean crust, are not one-way, however; some of the dissolved salts react with the rock and are removed from the water.\n\nA final process that provides salts to the oceans is submarine volcanism, the eruption of volcanoes under water. This is similar to the previous process in that seawater is reacting with hot rock and dissolving some of the mineral constituents.\n\nWill the oceans continue to become saltier? Not likely. In fact the sea has had about the same salt content for many hundred of millions if not billions of years. The salt content has reached a steady state. Dissolved salts are being removed from seawater to form new minerals at the bottom of the ocean as fast as rivers and hydrothermal proce
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Once again we see the rush of answers from people who have no idea. Not just misinformed, but with no knowledge of the subject.\n\nSweat contains salts because they raise the sweat to absorb more heat before it evaporates. And when it evaporates it takes all that heat with it. That makes salt water a far more efficient cooling mechanism than just pure water.\n\n\n>>> Because we expell most of the sodium in our bodies >>>through our sweat glands.\n\nWhat nonsense. Have you ever heard of kidneys? They are how the body expels excess sodium.  Jeepers, if we relied in sweating to regulate sodium levels everyone would die on a cold winter's day.\n\n\n>>>>It also serves to excrete and eliminate some of the \n>>>> unwanted wastes from your body, along with the moisture \n>>>>- and these wastes are salty !\n\nUnless you have been drinking EXTREMELY heavily or have some nasty disease the amount of 'waste' excreted through sweat is almost immeasurable. And almost none of that is salt. If the only salt in sweat was from excreted wastes it would be less salty than tap water.\n\n______\n>>>>Actually, sweat is salty because life originates from >>>>Earth's oceans. \n\n\nWe know that is nonsense because most mammals produce sweat that is far less saline than human sweat. If your theory were correct all mammals would have sweat of exactly the same salinity since allmamals have exactly the same common marine ancestor.\n\n>>>>If heat transfer were the only mechanism by which salty >>>>sweat were naturally selected, then the salinity of >>>>sweat might be much higher.\n\n\nIt might be bright pink too, but it isn't. Salt is a limiting resource in its own right on the savannas of Africa. Their is a limit to how much can be expended seating without leading to death.\n\nHowever the question asked why sweat is salty, not why it isn't saltier.
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hypersaline\nMarked by increased salt in a saline solution.
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The ocean is essential for life on Earth, and also helps make the climate fairly moderate. However, although the ocean contains 1,370 million cubic kilometres (334 million cubic miles) of water, humans can’t survive by drinking from it—it is too salty.\n\nTo a chemist, ‘salt’ refers to a wide range of chemicals where a metal is combined with a non-metal. Ordinary common salt is a compound formed when the metal sodium combines with the non-metal chlorine—sodium chloride. This contains electrically charged atoms, called ions, that attract each other, resulting in a fairly hard crystal. When salt dissolves, these ions separate. Sodium and chloride ions are the main ions in seawater, but not the only ones. The salty seas benefit man, because the ocean provides many useful minerals for our industries.
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Ya, I don't see any link between salt consumption and the evolutionary development of intelligence.  All mammals (humans and primates included) have dietary sources of sodium.  None of us could survive without it.  Besides, I'm pretty sure that fish consumption was not a source of sodium for the earliest humans.  In terms of human history, the art of 'salting' fish to preserve it was a rather recent development.\n\nAlthough neurons rely on sodium and other ions to propagate action potentials, these ions are not a source of energy.  Neurons rely primarily on glucose for energy, and in the absence of glucose, they will metabolize ketone bodies for energy.\n\nIt seems more likely that our intelligence probably began to evolve with basic 'analytical' skills, such as tool making and other simple feats of engineering.  It's possible that the development of 'fishing' methods contributed to our intelligence, as this would have required early humans to develop specialized tools and techniques.
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Sodium Chloride is an obvious example, as is Potassium Flouride, Lithium Bromide, or any other combination os the alkali metals and halogens from the periodic table.\n\nThe alkali metals are on the far left column of the table, and halogens are on the column 2nd from the right (next to last).\n\nAll of these combinations are collectively refered to as "salts".\nA salt is an ionic compound which contains a metal cation (+) and a nom-metal anion (-).  It is not a requirement that it be a specific type of metal or a specific type of non-metal though, for example, Iron Oxide is also technically a "salt", but it is more commonly refered to as an "Oxide", a more specific type of salt.\n\nhttp://www.webelements.com/index.html
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There are several different possible explanations for craving salt. \n\nHere's a link that might help you determine the source of your own cravings:\n\nhttp://www.arltma.com/SaltCrave.html
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No, NaCl is salt, an inorganic substances. Carbohydrate is sugar, an organic substance with empirical formular of (C6H12N6)n.
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Did you ever wonder why the oceans are filled with salt water instead of fresh? Just where did the salt come from? And is it the same salt you find on a dining room table? Most of the salt in the oceans came from land. Over millions of years, rain, rivers, and streams have washed over rocks containing the compound sodium chloride (NaCl), and carried it into the sea. You may know sodium chloride by its common name: table salt! Some of the salt in the oceans comes from undersea volcanoes and hydrothermal vents. When water evaporates from the surface of the ocean, the salt is left behind. After millions of years, the oceans have developed a noticeably salty taste.\n\nDifferent bodies of water have different amounts of salt mixed in, or different salinities. Salinity is expressed by the amount of salt found in 1,000 grams of water. Therefore, if we have 1 gram of salt and 1,000 grams of water, the salinity is 1 part per thousand, or 1 ppt.\n\nThe average ocean salinity is 35 ppt. This number varies between about 32 and 37 ppt. Rainfall, evaporation, river runoff, and ice formation cause the variations. For example, the Black Sea is so diluted by river runoff, its average salinity is only 16 ppt.\n\nFreshwater salinity is usually less than 0.5 ppt. Water between 0.5 ppt and 17 ppt is called brackish. Estuaries (where fresh river water meets salty ocean water) are examples of brackish waters.\n\nMost marine creatures keep the salinity inside their bodies at about the same concentration as the water outside their bodies because water likes a balance. If an animal that usually lives in salt water were placed in fresh water, the fresh water would flow into the animal through its skin. If a fresh water animal found itself in the salty ocean, the water inside of it would rush out. The process by which water flows through a semi-permeable membrane (a material that lets only some things pass through it) such as the animal's skin from an area of high concentration (lots of water, little salt) to an area of low concentration (little water, lots of salt) is called osmosis.\n\nThis is also why humans (and nearly all mammals) cannot drink salt water. When you take in those extra salts, your body will need to expel them as quickly as possible. Your kidneys will try to flush the salts out of your body in urine, and in the process pump out more water than you are taking in. Soon you'll be dehydrated and your cells and organs will not be able to function properly.
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There is no "artificial" salt, only refined (cleaned) salt.\n\nSea salt contains other ions - mainly potassium, calcium, magnesium, sulphate and carbonate. It may also contain some remnant water (at least there is a special salt the French produce in the Mediterranean which does).\n\nMineral salt from mines is comparably pure.\n\nSome varieties of table salt get iodide additions to make up for natural deficits of iodine in inland regions.
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Saline contains salt which ionizes in solution.  The ions cause the solution within your eyes to have a hypotonic environment, or net movement of water into cells.  Basically salts are ions and ions help retain water.
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If I remember right, the crystalline structure of the salt breaks down, and the Na and Cl ions move freely in the water, dissolving into the water.\nSince the salt breaks down into free ions, that explains why salt water is such a good electrical conductor.
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Salt?\n\nIodized salt?\n\nConstruction?\n\nDietary supplements?\n\nFluoridated tap water?\n\n@@@@@@@@@@@\n\n"Salt occurs naturally in many parts of the world as the mineral halite."
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Salt is widely distributed in nature. It is found in solution in ocean water in concentrations of about 30 g/litre (about 4.08 oz/gal) of water, meaning that salt makes up about 3 per cent of ocean water by weight. The compound is also distributed throughout many rivers and inland lakes and seas, the concentration varying from 0.002 per cent in the Mississippi River to 30 per cent in the Dead Sea. Salt can occur as a surface crust or layer in swamps and dry lake bottoms, especially in extremely arid regions. The mineral halite, more commonly known as rock salt or massive salt, occurs in beds deposited by the dehydration of ancient bodies of salt water. The compound is constantly being formed by the action of rivers and streams on rocks containing chlorides and compounds of sodium. Salt melts at 804° C (1479° F) and begins to vaporize at temperatures just slightly above this; it has a relative density of 2.17.
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Dear Friend,\n\nSalt in the ocean comes from the land. The elements that make up salts, such as chlorine and sodium, started out in rocks. Water and acids eroded the rocks, and rivers carried the elements into the sea. The oceans usually contain 35 parts of salts for every 1000 parts of sea water. This is lower in some places where there is a lot of fresh water coming into the ocean. It is higher where the Sun is very strong and evaporates more of the water. When all the water is gone, the salts are left behind as solid, white crystals.\n\nThe right amount of salt is a very important part of our diet. In ancient times, salt was worth its weight in gold. People used it to flavor and preserve their food. Without salt, the food would spoil. For this reason, salt became a symbol of purity. Some sacrifices in the Old Testament included salt (Leviticus 2:13; Ezekiel 43:24). Jesus called faithful people "the salt of the earth," and the apostle Paul said that our speech should be "seasoned with salt" (Colossians 4:6).