Why Is There Salt in the Ocean?
Since water is such a good solvent, of the 92 naturally occurring elements, more than 80 have been found in seawater and it s probable that the rest are there, but in such trace (science talk for “small”) amounts that we can t detect them. So how did they get there? Turns out that it s mostly been erosion from rocks and soil over time. We know this because the relative abundances of the various salts in the ocean are similar to the abundances found on earth. The most common are sodium, calcium, magnesium, and potassium. This does not explain the high levels of chlorine, bromine, sulfur, nitrogen, carbon, and water itself, however, since these are not very common on land. These have all turned out to be excess volatiles which means there are a lot of them and they are light weight. They ve come from outgassing of the earth s core as it cooled. Since the outgassing produced these materials as well as the water, the running off of which caused most of the erosion which was the source for
Every gallon of sea water contains an average of four ounces of salt. And there’s enough salt in the world’s oceans to cover the entire surface of the earth with a layer of salt more than 147 feet thick! But scientists aren’t quite sure how all that salt got into the oceans. Rocks that contain salt dissolve over the course of mi
