78 - Salt

Salt: the mineral so nice that much of early human civilization was based on its procurement! Now we put big chunks of it on tasty pretzels at the mall! If some ancient Greek person saw a big salty pretzel, I bet he'd be very excited and proud of us. Actually, they might have had pretzels back then, let me look. Nope doesn't look like they did, so I stand by my statement. 

Follow us on Twitter @SciShowTangents, where we’ll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes and you can ask the science couch questions! 

While you're at it, check out the Tangents crew on Twitter: Stefan: @itsmestefanchin Ceri: @ceriley Sam: @slamschultz Hank: @hankgreen

If you want to learn more about any of our main topics, check out these links:

[Truth or Fail]

Salt Hotels

https://www.lunasaladahotel.com.bo/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palacio_de_Sal

Lake Peigneur

https://gizmodo.com/thirty-years-ago-a-louisiana-lake-turned-into-a-swirli-5695711

https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2209&dat=19801121&id=mKUrAAAAIBAJ&sjid=0vwFAAAAIBAJ&pg=7170,4208269&hl=en

Underwater Icicles

https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/oceanography/underwater-brinicles.htm

[Fact Off]

Coconut water IV

http://www.mdpi.com/1420-3049/14/12/5144

https://podcasts.ufhealth.org/can-coconut-water-mimic-human-plasma/ 

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0735675700900627

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2011/08/15/139638930/saved-by-the-coconut-water-parsing-coconut-waters-medical-claims 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK154437/ 

Salt flats for satellite calibration

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Characterization-of-the-Salar-de-Uyuni-for-in-orbit-Lamparelli-Ponzoni/6b6a5037f838a2342d5681b642944fd68c775551

https://academic.oup.com/gji/article/172/1/31/2081107

https://www.nature.com/news/2007/071130/full/news.2007.315.html

[Ask the Science Couch]

Salt in a wound history

https://books.google.com/books?id=29gV_kCmZrIC&pg=PA141

https://www.abc.net.au/life/will-sea-water-help-heal-open-sores/11279036

http://utc.iath.virginia.edu/abolitn/abestwa8t.html

Saline solution

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/03/31/597666140/why-did-sterile-salt-water-become-the-iv-fluid-of-choice

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4794509/

Nociception

https://nba.uth.tmc.edu/neuroscience/m/s2/chapter06.html

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK32659/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2903433/

[Butt One More Thing]

Rectal salt glands

https://www.jstor.org/stable/1541076?seq=1

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5216465/

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00364827.1963.10410275?journalCode=ssar20

Salt: a mineral so nice that much of early human civilization was based on its procurement! Now we put big chunks of it on tasty pretzels at the mall! 

Follow us on Twitter @SciShowTangents, where we’ll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes and you can ask the science couch questions! 

While you're at it, check out the Tangents crew on Twitter: Stefan: @itsmestefanchin Ceri: @ceriley Sam: @slamschultz Hank: @hankgreen

If you want to learn more about any of our main topics, check out SciSHowTangents.org!