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Electrolytes, History

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Encyclopedia of Applied Electrochemistry

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Introduction

Salts play an important role in the development of mankind. Probably since more than 10,000 years, man uses sodium chloride to conserve food. It was often called “the white gold,” an expression that highlights the importance and value of this chemical. Workers were in medieval times paid with salt, hence the word “salary” for their income. Many other processes like leather tanning with mineral salts depended and still depend on salts. Acids (vinegar) and bases (soaps) also have played important roles in human culture. And in general, life on earth is not imaginable without electrolytes.

Still, the molecular composition of electrolytes in general and their behavior in solvents is known only since several decades, and still its properties are not fully understood. Man is capable of flying to the moon, but the prediction of activity coefficients of NaCl in water is still a challenge.

History

The history of scientific comprehension of electrolytes begins in the nineteenth...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut für Biophysik, Fachbereich Physik, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

    Werner Kunz

Authors
  1. Werner Kunz
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Correspondence to Werner Kunz .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Eppstein, Germany

    Gerhard Kreysa

  2. Yokohama National University, Fac. Engineering, Yokohama, Japan

    Ken-ichiro Ota

  3. Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, USA

    Robert F. Savinell

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Kunz, W. (2014). Electrolytes, History. In: Kreysa, G., Ota, Ki., Savinell, R.F. (eds) Encyclopedia of Applied Electrochemistry. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-6996-5_10

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