the.com/sulfate
the negative ion that scrubs your hair, hardens your plaster, and dims volcanoes from the stratosphere.
means A chemical ion (SO₄²⁻) or its compounds, formed when sulfur bonds with oxygen, found in everything from shampoo to gypsum to acid rain.
from From Latin 'sulfur' (also spelled sulpur), the old name for brimstone — that yellow, reeking mineral the ancients burned for purifying and fumigating. The '-ate' suffix is the chemist's standard tag for a salt or ester of an acid (here, sulfuric acid), a naming convention systematized by 18th-century French chemists who were busy giving order to the elements. So 'sulfate' literally announces itself as 'the sulfur-acid salt.'
- chemical form
- one sulfur hugged by four oxygens, charge minus two
- climate hack
- volcanic sulfate aerosols cooled Earth after Pinatubo erupted
- shampoo villain
- sodium lauryl sulfate makes the foamy lather you crave
- gypsum glue
- calcium sulfate becomes drywall holding up your house
- barium twist
- barium sulfate swallowed lets X-rays photograph your guts
epsom salt — magnesium sulfate, used in bath soaks and laxatives since the 1600s in epsom, england
copper sulfate — blue crystalline compound used as fungicide and algicide in agriculture and water treatment
acid rain — sulfuric acid (from sulfate emissions) with ph below 5.6, major environmental issue since the 1970s
barite mining — barium sulfate extraction, largest deposits in china producing ~9 million tons annually for oil drilling