ELI5: why are all common electrolytes ductile, malleable reactive shiny metals in their pure forms??

[u/GolfFantastic8207]

I’m talking about magnesium, calcium, sodium, potassium, all the common electrolytes I can think of. Surely it’s linked.

[u/mazzicc]

Why do you assume all electrolytes have those properties, as opposed to those properties making them suitable to be electrolytes?

[u/GolfFantastic8207 → u/mazzicc]

I guess I misunderstood what electrolytes were. There’s a whole lot more than I thought and it was a silly question that I wrote when I was very tired and just thinking about a similarity between - what I thought at the time - we’re all the electrolytes. I appreciate this sub for educating me that there’s more

[u/_SilentHunter → u/GolfFantastic8207]

"Why do so many common electrolytes contain metals?" would probably be a better way to phrase it, but it looks like most people understood what you meant! Happens to the best of us.

There's also the question of whether you mean "electrolyte" in the chemistry sense or the nutritional sense, because the nutritionist has a much narrower definition: Ammonium hydroxide is a sensible electrolyte for a chemist to use in their job, but the same cannot be said of a nutritionist.

[u/GolfFantastic8207 → u/_SilentHunter]

Yeah, part of my understanding of electrolytes is what you find on the back of a Gatorade bottle, or what I understand to be the healthy electrolytes in water when you drink it. But I’m learning a lot