how is the ocean made and why does it have salt in it?
467205
most people believe the seas are as much as 500 million years old because animals that lived then occur as fossils in rocks which once were under ancient seas. There are several theories about the origin of the seas, but no single theory explains all aspects of this puzzle. Many earth scientists agree with the hypothesis that both the atmosphere and the oceans have accumulated gradually through geologic time from some process of "degassing" of the Earth's interior. According to this theory, the ocean had its origin from the prolonged escape of water vapor and other gases from the molten igneous rocks of the Earth to the clouds surrounding the cooling Earth. After the Earth's surface had cooled to a temperature below the boiling point of water, rain began to fall and continued to fall for centuries. As the water drained into the great hollows in the Earth's surface, the primeval ocean came into existence. The forces of gravity prevented the water from leaving the planet.\n       All water, even rain water, contains dissolved chemicals which scientists call "salts." But not all water tastes salty. Water is fresh or salty according to individual judgment, and in making this decision man is more convinced by his sense of taste than by a laboratory test. It is one's taste buds that accept one water and reject another.\nOcean water is indeed a complex solution of mineral salts and of decayed biologic matter that results from the teeming life in the seas. 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.
496521
The concentration of salt in seawater varies with temperature.  Because the Arctic and Antarctic oceans are colder than the Indian Ocean and South China Sea, the salt is less soluble.  By the same principle, seawater near the floor of the ocean would be less salty because it's cold down there.  Throw in a few baby volcanoes, the Atlantic rift and a few dozen fumaroles, etc...  Then, you would have to know how many liters of water are in the oceans and that quantity is constantly changing.  Now, are you talking about common NaCL?  Or do you want to include all the sulfates, carbonates, phosphates, etc... which are all in the ocean?  Thanks for the easy 2 points!
8661
Well I spend some time googling for it but I didn't find any research on the topic.\n\nHowever, logicaly, a water spout would suck up the water as salt water since its a mechanical function, not an evaporative one.\n\nThat said, there is the concept of seeding a cloud with salt to cause rain to form.  It seems unlikely however that a salt in solution would come out of solution in the cloud, however maybe it could be MUCH diluted since most of a cloud would be freshwater.\n\nWith evaporation, the salt remains in the ocean.  In the case of the spout, the salt water is picked up and the returns down as salt water.\n\nThe logic here is that the salt HAS to return back to the earth somehow.
1061323
I'm surely not an expert in this, but I'll tell you what I know.\nThe salinity of ocean water varies from place to place. The oceans that surround the polar regions are less salty than the Persian Gulf areas. Also where rivers and streams empty into the ocean, that area tends to be less salty than the open ocean.\nSalinity is reported in terms of parts per thousand ( 0/00 ).\nSalt content in ocean water ranges from .5 0/00 to 40 0/00.\nThe average ocean salinity is 35 0/00. \nI had an ocean map which showed salt content of the world oceans, but cannot find it. I know this would have been a great help answering your question.  What I do remember of it is, that most major oceans had a salt content that ranged between 32 0/00 and 35 0/00.\n32 0/00 being close to islands and continents and 35 0/00 was recorded surrounding the center of the major oceans.\nI'm sure I did not answer your question completely, but I hope I helped?
746615
"In average, the water of the the whole world sea has a salinity of 35 (3,5%). This means that for each liter of water of the sea it has 35 grams of you leave dissolved (most is sodium chloride, NaCl). \n\nThe water of the sea does not have salinity around uniform of the globe. The water less saline of the planet is of the Gulf of the Finlândia, in the Baltic Sea. The sea most saline is the Red Sea, in the Middle East, where the heat increases the tax of evaporation in the surface, and has little fluvial discharge."\n\nThen there is 3,5 % of salt in the ocean's water.
638601
Most of the materials in mud are at least twice as dense as water and settle out rather quickly. Very small particles stay suspended longer. The ocean currents are not nearly as turbulent as river currents since it has much less obstructions to flow around, so there is less energy to keep the particles suspended.\n\nHowever, the correct answer is "it does". The ocean does mix with the earth and form mud, as a trip to a seashore with sediments fine enough to form mud will show you. Even when the sediments settle to the bottom they are still mud. It just isn't enough to fill the entire ocean, and is often covered with clear water that the sediments have settled out of already.
191847
The oceans are in relative equilibrium.  They aren't getting saltier.  There are several salt "sinks" which take the accumulated salt and remove it from the ocean.\n\nThe following is an excerpt from this Web reference on the subject:\n\nb. Sinks (removal processes) of ocean salinity include salt spray which is blown over land; at oceanic ridges magnesium and sulfate ions are incorporated into mineral deposits; calcium, sulfate, and sodium are deposited as biogenous sediments in animal shells and fecal pellets; most importantly, almost all ions can be absorbed to the surface of sinking clay and biological particles.\nhttp://www-ocean.tamu.edu/~duce/chapter07.html\n\nDoing a Yahoo Search for:\nocean salinity salt removal\nhttp://search.yahoo.com/search?p=ocean+salinity+salt+removal&ei=UTF-8&fr=slv1-&x=wrt\n\nyou can find a number of related articles that talk about what happens to the salt.\nhttp://www.palomar.edu/oceanography/salty_ocean.htm\nhttp://www.geo.arizona.edu/geo2xx/geo212_2/Lectures/OC05.SaltGas.pdf#search='ocean%20salinity%20salt%20removal'\nhttp://www.oceansonline.com/salts.htm
58936
All water, even rain water, contains dissolved chemicals which scientists call "salts." But not all water tastes salty. Water is fresh or salty according to individual judgment, and in making this decision man is more convinced by his sense of taste than by a laboratory test. It is one's taste buds that accept one water and reject another.\nA simple experiment illustrates this. Fill three glasses with water from the kitchen faucet. Drink from one and it tastes fresh even though some dissolved salts are naturally present. Add a pinch of table salt to the second, and the water may taste fresh or slightly salty depending on a personal taste threshold and on the amount of salt held in a "pinch." But add a teaspoon of salt to the third and your taste buds vehemently protest that this water is too salty to drink; this glass of water has about the same salt content as a glass of sea water.\nObviously, the ocean, in contrast to the water we use daily, contains unacceptable amounts of dissolved chemicals; it is too salty for human consumption. \n\nHOW SALTY IS THE OCEAN?...\nHow salty the ocean is, however, defies ordinary comprehension. Some scientists estimate that the oceans contain as much as 50 quadrillion tons (50 million billion tons) of dissolved solids.\n\nIf the salt in the sea could be removed and spread evenly over the Earth's land surface it would form a layer more than 500 feet thick, about the height of a 40-story office building. The saltiness of the ocean is more understandable when compared with the salt content of a fresh-water lake. For example, when 1 cubic foot of sea water evaporates it yields about 2.2 pounds of salt, but 1 cubic foot of fresh water from Lake Michigan contains only one one-hundredth (0.01) of a pound of salt, or about one sixth of an ounce. Thus, sea water is 220 times saltier than the fresh lake water. What arouses the scientist's curiosity is not so much why the ocean is salty, but why it isn't fresh like the rivers and streams that empty into it. Further, what is the origin of the sea and of its "salts"? And how does one explain ocean water's remarkably uniform chemical composition? To these and related questions, scientists seek answers with full awareness that little about the oceans is understood.\n\n\nIllustration: Sources of salts in the ocean.\n\nTHE ORIGIN OF THE SEA...\nIn popular language, "ocean" and "sea" are used interchangeably. Today's seas are the North and South Pacific, North and South Atlantic, Indian and Arctic Oceans and the Antarctic waters or seas.\nScientists believe that the seas are as much as 500 million years old because animals that lived then occur as fossils in rocks which once were under ancient seas. There are several theories about the origin of the seas, but no single theory explains all aspects of this puzzle. Many earth scientists agree with the hypothesis that both the atmosphere and the oceans have accumulated gradually through geologic time from some process of "degassing" of the Earth's interior. According to this theory, the ocean had its origin from the prolonged escape of water vapor and other gases from the molten igneous rocks of the Earth to the clouds surrounding the cooling Earth. After the Earth's surface had cooled to a temperature below the boiling point of water, rain began to fall and continued to fall for centuries. As the water drained into the great hollows in the Earth's surface, the primeval ocean came into existence. The forces of gravity prevented the water from leaving the planet.\n\nSOURCES OF THE SALTS...\nSea water has been defined as a weak solution of almost everything. Ocean water is indeed a complex solution of mineral salts and of decayed biologic matter that results from the teeming life in the seas. Most of the ocean's salts were derived from gradual processes such the breaking up of the cooled igneous rocks of the Earth&#39
115310
Why is the sea supposed to be on fire? You might want to add some detail.\nAnd besides seawater is not purely H20. There is Sodium Chloride, which makes the sea water salty. Plus there is plenty of mineral, garbage, fecis,etc. which makes the composition of sea water to be very complex.
873513
"Ocean water is  a complex solution of mineral salts and of decayed biologic matter that results from the teeming life in the seas. 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."
162986
We typed "how does salt melt ice" into the Yahoo! Search box and were soon traveling the well-worn path to How Stuff Works. \nThere we learned that the answer has to do with melting points. Most people know that water freezes at a temperature of 32°Fahrenheit (0°Celsius). Salt dissolves fairly rapidly in ice, lowering its freezing point in an effect known as freezing point depression, and melting it in the process. \n\nBut what's going on at the molecular level? Basically, salt molecules are bonding with water molecules, making it more difficult for ice to form. The result is a solution with a lower freezing temperature. For example, a 10% salt solution freezes at 20°F (-6°C), while a 20% salt solution freezes at 2°F (-16°C). \n\nYou've also probably noticed the effect of salt water on freezing points if you've tried to make ice cream or if you've wondered why the ocean doesn't freeze at the same time as bodies of fresh water, such as rivers, lakes, and ponds.
596282
Because theres so much water thats constantly moving that the sun can't warm it all up. The ocean is so deep, and that water is about 30 degrees (yes farenheit, which doesnt freeze because of the salt in it) that it continusoly gets mixed up and remains a constant tempertature that seems cold to us. =)
38650
The sun causes the water to evaporate leaving the salt behind.
1057120
If I remember right, the crystalline structure of the salt breaks down, and the Na and Cl ions move freely in the water, dissolving into the water.\nSince the salt breaks down into free ions, that explains why salt water is such a good electrical conductor.
320292
Scientific theories behind the origins of sea salt started with Sir Edmond Halley in 1715, who proposed that salt and other minerals were carried into the sea by rivers, having been leached out of the ground by rainfall runoff. Upon reaching the ocean, these salts would be retained and concentrated as the process of evaporation (see Hydrologic cycle) removed the water. Halley noted that of the small number of lakes in the world without ocean outlets (such as the Dead Sea and the Caspian Sea, see endorheic basin), most have high salt content. Halley termed this process "continental weathering".\n\nHalley's theory is partly correct. In addition, sodium was leached out of the ocean floor when the oceans first formed. The presence of the other dominant element of salt, chloride, results from "outgassing" of chloride (as hydrochloric acid) with other gases from Earth's interior via volcanos and hydrothermal vents. The sodium and chloride subsequently became the most abundant constituents of sea salt.\n\nOcean salinity has been stable for millions of years, most likely as a consequence of a chemical/tectonic system which recycles the salt. Since the ocean's creation, sodium is no longer leached out of the ocean floor, but instead is captured in sedimentary layers covering the bed of the ocean. One theory is that plate tectonics result in salt being forced under the continental land masses, where it is again slowly leached to the surface.
557119
Sand in the ocean deals with water. Sand in the desert would be dealing with wind and heat. Ocean water also contains minerals/salts which may be adhering or tearing away at the sand. The only water desert sand may ever encounter is more than likely the rare rainfall- freshwater, which if anything would help "wash" away any minerals bonding to it. Wet vs. Dry- either way sand gets in places you don't want it... So just keep away from it unless you're gonna superheat the stuff and make glass.. heheh.
781539
Salt is widely distributed in nature. It is found in solution in ocean water in concentrations of about 30 g/litre (about 4.08 oz/gal) of water, meaning that salt makes up about 3 per cent of ocean water by weight. The compound is also distributed throughout many rivers and inland lakes and seas, the concentration varying from 0.002 per cent in the Mississippi River to 30 per cent in the Dead Sea. Salt can occur as a surface crust or layer in swamps and dry lake bottoms, especially in extremely arid regions. The mineral halite, more commonly known as rock salt or massive salt, occurs in beds deposited by the dehydration of ancient bodies of salt water. The compound is constantly being formed by the action of rivers and streams on rocks containing chlorides and compounds of sodium. Salt melts at 804° C (1479° F) and begins to vaporize at temperatures just slightly above this; it has a relative density of 2.17.