Here is a brief description of sodium.
Soap is generally a sodium salt of fatty acids.
The importance of common salt to animal nutrition has been recognized since prehistoric times. To play the movies, you need QuickTime for MacOS or Windows installed, or some other MPEG movie viewer. The picture above shows the result of adding different metal salts to a burning reaction mixture of potassium chlorate and sucrose. The red colour originates from strontium sulphate. The green colour originates from barium chlorate.