I would like to assert my science-geekiness onto “A Tisket, A Tasket,” [Down the Hatch, December], the article about personalized gift baskets. I have been creating handmade Christmas gifts for some time and enjoyed Ms. March’s sentiments on the subject. Additionally, I very much look forward to trying out the Fiscalini San Joaquin Gold cheese, but have not yet run across it. However, it is the paragraph on salt that got me on my scientific high horse. Salt is NaCl, not NaCL. Sodium chloride, salt, is a binary compound of two elements, sodium and chlorine. Sodium is abbreviated Na. Chlorine is abbreviated Cl (the name changes to chloride when combined with other elements). There is only one capital letter per element symbol on the periodic table. Ms. March is referring to a compound with three elements when she wrote of NaCL: Na is sodium, C is carbon, while the abbreviation L is not used for any element.
Janice Rideout
St. Louis Park
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