Mass Of Iodine That Reacted

Facts Almost Iodine

Iodine can sublimate into a violet-pink gas. (Image credit: <a href="http://images-of-elements.com/iodine.php">Images of elements</a>)

Iodine is an essential element needed for life. It is best known for the vital role it plays in thyroid hormone production in humans as well as in all vertebrates. Iodine deficiency can lead to serious health issues, including goiter (enlarged thyroid gland), intellectual disability and cretinism.

Equally a pure chemical element, iodine is a lustrous imperial-blackness nonmetal that is solid under standard conditions. It sublimes (changes from a solid to a gaseous state while bypassing a liquid form) hands and gives off a purple vapor. Although information technology is technically a not-metal, it exhibits some metallic qualities.

Iodine is classified as a halogen — a subset of very chemically reactive elements (Group 17 on the periodic table) that exist in the environment as compounds rather than as pure elements. The other halogens include fluorine (F), chlorine (Cl), bromine (Br) and astatine (At). The term halogen ways "salt-producing." When these elements react with metals, they produce a broad variety of salts, such as calcium fluoride, sodium chloride (common tabular array salt), argent bromide and potassium iodide.

Iodine is the least reactive of the halogens besides as the most electropositive, significant information technology tends to lose electrons and form positive ions during chemical reactions. It is also the heaviest and the to the lowest degree abundant of the stable halogens. There are 30 known isotopes of iodine, but only one is naturally occurring (I-127).

Iodine has several commercial applications and can be establish in a diverseness of pharmaceuticals, disinfectants, inks and dyes, catalysts, photography chemicals and animal feed supplements. It plays a particularly prominent role in medicine. For example, iodine compounds are normally used as sterilizing and wound-cleansing solutions and equally internal contrasting agents in imaging techniques such every bit computed tomography (CT) scans, radiography and fluoroscopy. The radioactive isotope iodine-131 is likewise used to treat cancer in the thyroid gland.

Iodine is a bluish-black, lustrous solid. (Paradigm credit: Images of elements)

Trace chemical element

About 99.half-dozen pct of the Earth's mass is a mixture of 32 chemical elements, according to the Globe Iodine Association (WIA). The remaining 0.4 percent is divided among 64 elements — all of these in trace amounts. Iodine is the 61st chemical element in terms of abundance, making information technology non only ane of the to the lowest degree abundant nonmetallic elements on Globe but also 1 of the rarest elements needed for life.

Although iodine is not peculiarly abundant, it tin be establish in trace amounts near everywhere: water, soil, rocks, plants, animals and humans. Seawater is the largest reserve of iodine, holding about 34.5 million tons. But the concentrations are so low — averaging betwixt l to 60 parts per billion (ppb) — that direct extraction is not feasible. Rivers incorporate less iodine, at approximately five ppb, according to Lenntech Water Treatment Solutions of Denmark.

Most of the world'southward industrial iodine is obtained from brines (water strongly saturated in salt) associated with gas wells in Japan and from caliche ore mined in the Atacama Desert of northern Republic of chile. In the U.s.a., iodine is derived from deep well brines in northern Oklahoma.

Electron configuration and elemental properties of iodine. (Image credit: Greg Robson/Artistic Commons, Andrei Marincas (opens in new tab) Shutterstock (opens in new tab))

Just the facts

Atomic number (number of protons in the nucleus): 53
Atomic symbol (on the periodic table of the elements): I
Atomic weight (average mass of the atom): 126.90447
Density: 4.93 grams per cubic centimeter
Phase at room temperature: Solid
Melting point: 236.7 degrees Fahrenheit (113.7 degrees Celsius)
Boiling indicate: 363.9 F (184.4 C)
Number of isotopes (atoms of the same element with a different number of neutrons): 37 known isotopes; one stable (I-127)

History

Bernard Courtois, a French chemist, accidentally discovered iodine in 1811 during the Napoleonic Wars. Courtois was helping his father manufacture saltpeter — an important component in gunpowder that was in heavy demand at the time. Initially, he had been using woods ash equally the source of potassium nitrate needed to brand the saltpeter. Yet, due to a wood ash shortage, he began using seaweed instead. In order to isolate the sodium and potassium extracts from the seaweed, Courtois would burn the seaweed and wash the ash with water. Then, sulfuric acid was added to eliminate the leftover waste matter. After adding a little likewise much sulfuric acid ane time, Courtois noticed a cloud of violet gas. He then discovered that the vapor would condense into deep violet crystals on cold surfaces.

At the fourth dimension, Courtois did not realize he had discovered iodine, but he suspected it might be a new element. He gave some samples to other scientists to go along the research who somewhen confirmed that it was indeed a new chemical element. It was given the proper name iode (from the Greek ioeidēs, significant "violet colored") by French chemist Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac.

Although Courtois wasn't the one to name it, he was still later best-selling as the beginning person to isolate iodine. In 1831 he received the Montyon Prize from the Imperial Academy of Sciences for his piece of work, but unfortunately, he never gained whatever financial do good from his discovery.

Who knew?

The first iodized table salt was sold in Michigan in 1924. Before this, most people living along the coasts still got plenty of iodine merely past being near the ocean and the coastal soil. People living further inland, withal, were ofttimes iodine-deficient, resulting in a higher incidence of goiter. One time the connection between iodine deficiency and goiter was established, public health officials began looking for means to alleviate the problem — somewhen leading to iodized common salt.
Iodine is a practiced test for starch every bit information technology turns a deep blueish color when it comes in contact with it.
Photography was the beginning commercial apply for iodine. In 1839, Louis Daguerre invented a method for producing images, chosen daguerreotypes, on thin sheets of metallic.
Even animals tin can develop goiters due to iodine deficiency. Information technology is not rare to see goiters in dogs, cattle, goats, birds and fish.
Iodine is a component of nuclear fallout, the residual radioactive cloth that falls from the sky after a nuclear blast. People in a radioactive area are in danger of inhaling or ingesting iodine, which is highly toxic in large doses.

Thyroid wellness

Iodine is required for the synthesis of thyroid hormones thyroxine (T₄) and triiodothyronine (T_iii). T₄ and T_three comprise four and three atoms of iodine per molecule, respectively. These hormones are vital to human health as they control the production and utilization of energy throughout the unabridged body. A deficiency in iodine leads to reduced production of these hormones and may issue in goiter and/or mild to severe intellectual inability. In very severe cases of iodine deficiency in pregnant women, babies can be built-in with built hypothyroidism (or cretinism, now considered a derogatory term), a condition of severely stunted physical and mental evolution.

Overall, iodine deficiency affects well-nigh 2 billion people worldwide and is the leading preventable cause of mental disability in developing areas of the world, according to Synapse, an Australian encephalon injury organization. India has the highest prevalence of iodine health conditions, with 500 million people suffering from deficiency, 54 million from goiter and 2 million from full-blown hypothyroidism, co-ordinate to Synapse.

The U.Southward. recommended daily intake of iodine is 150 micrograms (mcg) per mean solar day for adults and approximately double that corporeality for pregnant and nursing women. Body of water vegetables and animals — peculiarly seaweeds (wakame and kelp), scallops, shrimp and cod — take the highest concentrations of iodine, but iodine also comes from land-based nutrient sources, such as plants that abound in iodine-rich soil or from dairy products and eggs every bit long as the cows and chickens had enough iodine in their diets.

Since iodine is needed in only trace amounts, getting likewise much of it can cause health issues as well. People who eat a lot of foods rich in iodine, peculiarly kelp and wakame, on a daily footing should brand sure that their total daily intake does not exceed the Tolerable Upper Limit (UL) established by the National University of Sciences of 1,100 micrograms (for adults xix and older) per day, co-ordinate to the Globe's Healthiest Foods (WHF).

Weak solutions of iodine are used to treat wounds. (Image credit: Helga Chirk / Shutterstock (opens in new tab))

Iodized common salt

American pathologist David Marine is credited with getting the ball rolling toward putting iodine in salt. On his starting time day as a new physician in Cleveland in 1905, Marine was immediately struck with how many people, and fifty-fifty dogs, were walking around with swollen necks, indicative of a widespread goiter problem. In fact, the condition had become so pervasive that a large stretch of land from the Rockies to the Dandy Lakes region to western New York was known as the "goiter belt."

After exploring a few hypotheses and coming upwardly empty-handed, Marine began experimenting with iodine supplements. He conducted 1 of the first ever large-scale man experiments by giving miniscule doses of iodine to ii,000 healthy (goiter-complimentary) students in Akron, Ohio. A command group of two,000 healthy students were not given whatever iodine just were still closely monitored.

The results were astounding. Of the 2,000 who received iodine, only 5 eventually developed a thyroid condition, compared to 475 individuals in the control grouping.

Although there had been some existing research at the fourth dimension linking iodine to the thyroid gland, Marine conclusively established that iodine was indeed an essential element for life and i in whose absence could result in severe health problems. Marine'due south of import findings led to the first iodized common salt being sold in the United States in 1924. Soon after its introduction, iodized salt had largely eliminated the widespread goiter deficiency.

Additional resource

Los Alamos National Laboratory: Iodine
Jefferson Lab: The Element Iodine
Royal Lodge of Chemical science: Iodine

Traci Pedersen is a freelance writer who has written extensively on themes of science, psychology, organized religion and alternative health for a variety of publications. She has also written fourteen science chapter books and numerous instructor resource books for the elementary classroom. She is constantly brainstorming how to turn age-old topics into new and exciting stories.