Why is there salt in the ocean?

by

✅ Answers

? Best Answer

  • When you evaporate one cubic foot of ocean water, you get about 2.2 pounds of salt. You evaporate the same amount of freshwater and you only get about one one-hundredth (0.01) of a pound of salt (1/6th of an ounce). So… seawater is about 220x saltier than freshwater (even though freshwater still does have salt).

    Sea water is a weak solution of just about everything. A complex solution of mineral salts and of decayed biologic matter from ocean life. Most of the ocean’s salts were derived from gradual processes such the breaking up of the cooled igneous rocks of the Earth’s crust by weathering and erosion, the wearing down of mountains, and the dissolving action of rains and streams which transported their mineral washings to the sea. Some of the ocean’s salts have been dissolved from rocks and sediments below its floor. Other sources of salts include the solid and gaseous materials that escaped from the Earth’s crust through volcanic vents or that originated in the atmosphere.

    At least 72 chemical elements have been identified in sea water, most in extremely small amounts. Probably all the Earth’s naturally occurring elements exist in the sea. Elements may combine in various ways and form insoluble products (or precipitates) that sink to the ocean floor. But even these precipitates are subject to chemical alteration because of the overlying sea water which continues to exert its environmental influence.

    The ocean continues to be salty because rivers continue to put mineral salts into the water, and there is no way to get them out and back onto land. When water evaporates, it does so as freshwater. Thus, it concentrates. However, as I just mentioned, the ocean is at an equilibrium in which an overabundance of salts will precipitate. This is how the oceans maintain their average 35 parts per thousand (35 o/oo) salinity.
    – Chosen by Asker

  • Sodium is a naturally occurring element, and it does not evaporate with the water. Also, as rivers and streams flow into the ocean, they carry with them all of the debris from the river banks, which often includes salt.

    So the salt goes in, but does not come out.

  • Salt is water soluble and easily dissolved from the land and transported to the oceans by rivers where it remains because there isn’t any active law of physics that allows it to be transported back to the land.

  • Answer hidden due to its low rating

    There’s salt in the ocean because the oceans are vast, water giants. The minerals under the ocean soon get separated and eventually the mineral salt gets mixed with the water. And that’s why oceans are salt water.

    Source(s):
    Social Studies 8th Grade Classes

    • Leave a Comment