how did salt get into the ocean?
919611
Salt is carried into the oceans by the rivers that flow into it from land.  The river water absorbs salt from the rocks and minerals in the earth; the amount in the river water is small, so the water is not salty, but once it gets into the ocean the salt accumulates.  When ocean water evaporates back into the atmosphere, the salts stay behind and accumulate.  It takes thousands of years to build up to the present concentration, but it is still going on.
16062
As water flows in rivers, it picks up small amounts of mineral salts from the rocks, dried up remains of ancient salt seas and lakes and soil of the river beds. This very-slightly salty water flows into the oceans and seas. The water in the oceans only leaves by evaporating (and the freezing of polar ice), but the salt remains dissolved in the ocean - it does not evaporate. So the remaining water gets saltier and saltier as time passes.\n\nAnd please SEARCH before asking questions.
431107
Just the water evaporates leaving behind the salt.  Some places along the Mediterranean they have a process that the salt water goes though leaving behind the salt that we use.  They have several locks that the salt water drain from and finally ends up as a pile of salt to be processed.\nOh by the way clouds don't melt.  The water vapors get heavy until they're so heavy the the water drop as rain droplets.No they do not mix into a different form of water.\nNO! NO! NO! to all the rest of your question.\nChuck
276701
the ocean is salty as it contains water colected from different sources such as rivers which bring with them different types of mineral salts before they mingle with the ocean.
976344
The salt gets dissolved in the water.
64688
How 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.\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.
1117056
The ocean is essential for life on Earth, and also helps make the climate fairly moderate. However, although the ocean contains 1,370 million cubic kilometres (334 million cubic miles) of water, humans can’t survive by drinking from it—it is too salty.\n\nTo a chemist, ‘salt’ refers to a wide range of chemicals where a metal is combined with a non-metal. Ordinary common salt is a compound formed when the metal sodium combines with the non-metal chlorine—sodium chloride. This contains electrically charged atoms, called ions, that attract each other, resulting in a fairly hard crystal. When salt dissolves, these ions separate. Sodium and chloride ions are the main ions in seawater, but not the only ones. The salty seas benefit man, because the ocean provides many useful minerals for our industries.
1117915
because the salt u use in the kitchen does not contain all the particals in the sea water like sodium sulphate magnesium sulphate etc because they are removed in the process  of making the salt and some times the salt it cut down from deep earth and they are also cleaned by removing the toxic particles and iodised which may alter the sea water salt from earth solt altho the main component of salt is Na Cl it has other particals such as iodine and k+ irons Fe ect...
235582
The salt comes from the deposition a long period of time from  rivers and streams. Earth has salt naturally with in soils and such. Think of it this way, salt Was being deposited at a faster rate than it was being removed over millions of years giving salt water. The oceans are NOT getting saltier, it is in a state of equalibrium currently with the rate of removal over deposition.
819026
Because of the sea salt.
961956
Coz the water comes from the Pacific and goes into the Atlantic
798090
It's because salt is an electrolyte, a substance containing ions (charged atoms or molecules). The charges are what allow the atoms to conduct electricity, I think.
844403
The reason why sea water is salty is of course because of the presence of salt. However, how does it get into the ocean?? \n\nAs water evaporates, it rises and cools and becomes clouds. It then falls off as rain. These are fresh water as the process is like distillation. As you may know, water is a pretty good solvent and as it washes down the ground, it dissolves small amount of minerals, which includes salt, NaCl.\n\nAs you know, water does not just stay on the ground, it flows from high place to low, carry all these minerals with it. As it moves to the lowest point on earth, there is no where to go, so it accumulates. As time goes on, it forms ocean. As this process continues, all the salts are washes into the ocean with no exit, as a result, make the ocean more and more salty.\n\nThe dead sea, is indeed the lowest level on earth, and is indeed the most salty sea. The water density is so high (because it has so much salt in it) that almost anything can float on it.
810676
Salinity is measures as the amount of salt content in water in ppt (parts per thousand).\nThe amount of salinity depends on the source of water that feeds water into the sea. At the sea bed there is sand, rocks and sediments which contribute to the salt content in the sea. If there are many fresh water rivers opening into the sea with continuous supply the salinity will be low. Also if there is continuous supply of melting snow (this happens near the poles), content of salt will be low. \nHowever, if there is not much of fresh water flowing into the sea, the salinity will be high. Also, if the rate of evaporation is high, salinity will be high (this happens in tropical regions) because water evaporates leaving behind salts.\n\nThe Dead Sea has the highest salinity in the world. In fact the density of water is so high due to salt content that humans can actually float on the water. This is because Dead Sea is completely land-locked and has no source to supply fresh water.
26865
Average salinity of sea water is 35 parts per thousand. Yes it does differ "slighty" place to place. The salinity of the ocean on the west coast is different than that of the east. It varies due to the various factors like the amount of freash water flowing into that part of the sea, water from ice, temperature, ocean currents etc.\n\nThe salt of the sea has been due to accumulation of various salts carried into it by the rivers. The water returns to the land due to the water cycle but the salt remains in the sea and over the (thousands of) years it has become much salty.\n\nThere are also other source like degrading biological matter.
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.
1095674
Why is the Ocean Salty?\n\nAll 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 ign