News Chemistry

Salt spices up chemistry

Hot, compressed sodium chloride stretches fundamental rules of matter

SALT GONE WILD  Experiments using extreme conditions reveal that common table salt, NaCl, can form exotic compounds, such as NaCl3. In this illustration, purple represents sodium, green represents chlorine and blue represents electron clouds.

Courtesy of A.R. Oganov and Weiwei Zhang

By Beth Mole

- More than 2 years ago

With a dash of table salt, scientists have created exotic compounds that bend the basic rules of chemical bonds and matter in the universe, researchers report in the Dec.