What does the quote "you can't buy a bottle of sodium ions" mean? Why can't you buy a bottle of sodium ions?

Question

I can't comprehend the message this quote is supposed to give me!

Answer 1

Well it means that sodium ions don't come alone, they come with an anion attached, like chloride as in Na+Cl-.

You cannot isolate pure sodium ions an place them separately into a container.

Answer 2

You can't buy a bottle of sodium ions because you would be charged way too much if you tried. :) (Electrically, that is.) Seriously, the unbalanced charge on a bottle of sodium ions, if you could collect enough unbalanced charges, would have a voltage on it that would far surpass any reasonable dielectric to contain it. That is what the quote means - you can't isolate a significant number of sodium ions from their negative charges.

You can, however, buy a bottle (or bag or box) of sodium ions if their positive charges are counterbalanced by an equal number of negative charges. In fact, you do so every time you buy table salt (sodium chloride) baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) or washing soda (sodium carbonate). You can also buy trisodium phosphate at hardware stores for washing down walls to prepare them for repainting. Lye (sodium hydroxide) is another product of some commercial importants.

Answer 3

All compounds must be neutral, so if you wanted some sodium ions, you would also have to buy some negative chloride ions to balance out the positive charges on the sodium ions! That is, you would have to buy some common salt...

Answer 4

All the above answers are close but not technically correct. All aqueous solutions must be electrically neutral. I.e. the summation of all the cations equivalence must be equal to the summation of all the anions equivalence. Water consists of H20, H+, and OH- ions. So in absolutely pure water:
[cations] = [anions]
[H+] = [OH-]

And pH=7.0. You can make/purchase a solution of sodium hydroxide (NaOH). When sodium hydroxide is added to water it disassociates to Na+ and OH- ions. So for a 1 mM NaOH in pure water solution:

[H+] + [Na+] = [OH-]
1E-11 +1E-3 = 1.00000001E-3

At a pH = 11. So in effect this solution has 1 mM Na+ ions in water at a pH =11. But you cannot have a stable solution of just pure Na+ because it has to be electrically neutral. I hope this helps.