Why is the sea salty??

Question

Why is the sea salty??

Answer 1

The ocean—the seas—are made up of 96.5 percent pure water. The remaining 3.5 percent is made up of 75 other elements. Six elements are responsible for 99 percent of the sea's saltiness. They are: chloride, sodium, sulfur, magnesium, calcium, and potassium. Most of the saltiness comes from the compound sodium chloride (ordinary table salt).

    Where do the elements come from? The wearing away of rocks on land. As rock erodes, rivers carry the salts and other minerals to the ocean. Volcanoes and undersea springs also release salts to the ocean.

Answer 2

Sea-water is a complex substance, containing various dissolved chemicals, particularly sodium chloride (common salt), and gasses from the atmosphere. the amount of salts in sea-water, which make it unsuitable for drinking or for irrigating land, is called the Salinity. the salinity varies. variations occur where large amounts of fresh water, from rain, ice, and rivers, reduce the salinity, or where high evaporation increases it. the greatest salinities are inland seas such as the Dead Sea.

Answer 3

Rivers and Streams flowing into the sea contains small amounts of dissolved salt that is picked up from the soil. Undersea Volcanoes and springs also release salt into the sea.

Water leaves the sea thru evaporation, leaving behind the salt. So the remaining water tastes more salty..

Answer 4

because the lime rocks on the mouth to the ocean get eroded by the river, canal at a full speed of 50mph, the lime rocks have salt in them therefore the sea gets salty.

hope it helps x x

Answer 5

when it rains on high mountains ,water flows down towards the sea .the water flows over the rocks to come to sea.rocks r made of lime stone so they r salty,when water runs on rocks salt is added in water.due to this sea water becomes salty

Answer 6

Everyone who has been to the beach knows that seawater is salty. Everyone also knows that fresh water in rain, rivers, and even ice is not salty. Why are some of Earth’s waters salty and others not? There are two clues that give us the answer. First, “fresh” water is not entirely free of dissolved salt. Even rainwater has traces of substances dissolved in it that were picked up during passage through the atmosphere. Much of this material that “washes out” of the atmosphere today is pollution, but there are also natural substances present.

As rainwater passes through soil and percolates through rocks, it dissolves some of the minerals, a process called weathering. This is the water we drink, and of course, we cannot taste the salt because its concentration is too low. Eventually, this water with its small load of dissolved minerals or salts reaches a stream and flows into lakes and the ocean. The annual addition of dissolved salts by rivers is only a tiny fraction of the total salt in the ocean. The dissolved salts carried by all the world’s rivers would equal the salt in the ocean in about 200 to 300 million years

Answer 7

The "yes mag" link above is a good enough account. Good link.

I would just add that salt we call 'table salt' is just one of many "salts", by definition "A salt is the substance formed between the anion of an acid and the cation of a base"

"Base" is the more accurate name for an alkali.

So don't think of all rocks having sodium chloride in them, you can have many more types as chloride is the easiest to react with but bromide is another, the salts in the sea are the ones most common to an area or ones that can be easily disolved by river and rain water from where ever they are found.

Also given mans interference the amount of salts not natural in the sea can be much higher in certain areas  (those near major cities), all of which can contribute to the chemical breakdown and thus saltiness of the sea.

Answer 8

here you go !. haha

Ocean water is a complex solution of mineral salts and of decaying/decayed biological matter that results from the abundance of 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. This process has been occurring for hundreds of millions of years, and therefore early oceans wouldn't have been as salty as they are today.

The ocean is not 'diluted' by the addition of fresh water through rain and rivers because the saltiness of the ocean is the result of several natural influences and processes, the salt load of the streams entering the ocean is just one of these factors. In addition, salts become concentrated in the sea because the sun's heat distills or vaporizes almost pure water from the surface of the sea and leaves the salts behind (this process is part of the continual exchange of water between the Earth and the atmosphere that is called the hydrologic cycle).

Here is another one .. :

Most of the salt in the oceans came from land. Over millions of years, rain, rivers, and streams have washed over rocks containing the compound sodium chloride (NaCl), and carried it into the sea. You may know sodium chloride by its common name: table salt! Some of the salt in the oceans comes from undersea volcanoes and hydrothermal vents. When water evaporates from the surface of the ocean, the salt is left behind. After millions of years, the oceans have developed a noticeably salty taste.

and another one .. this is just uhm .. why the ocean is getting saltier .. haha BOOM!. :

Salt dissolves well in water streams/rivers pick it up and drain it to the ocean. There the water can evaporate but the salt stays.

hope this help !. >.<

take care .