A few years ago, a group of physicists created an unusual, never-before-seen subatomic particle. Using a particle accelerator at Riken, a Japanese research institute, they slammed streams of calcium ...

Half a century ago, the battery of the future was built out of sodium. The reason has to do with why the seas are salty. Sodium is a light element that ionizes easily, giving up one of its electrons.

Salt and sodium differ, and understanding that helps you manage daily intake. Most sodium comes from packaged foods, so ...

The body is, for all intents and purposes, an extraordinarily complex machine. This requires a multitude of parts all working together in complicated relationships from the micro- to macromolecular ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Most of today's batteries are made up of rare lithium mined from the mountains of South America. If the world depletes this source, then battery production could stagnate.

Scientific American is part of Springer Nature, which owns or has commercial relations with thousands of scientific publications (many of them can be found at www ...

Sodium is a mineral that occurs naturally in many of the foods we eat. Sodium chloride, or salt, is the most common type of sodium found in nature. It's also the type of sodium you'll find in food.