Chowrangi

Let’s add some of our knowledge. Have you ever thought that why sea is salty? And since it is so salty, how much salt it contains??

Well the answer is; if all the salt in the sea were spread equally over the land, it would form a layer more than 500 feet [150 m] thick for about 45 stories high! Where does all that salt come from??

Scientists have discovered a number of sources.

One source is the ground beneath our feet. As rainwater soaks through soil and rocks, it dissolves tiny amounts of minerals, including salts and their chemical elements, and carries them out to sea by means of streams and rivers. This process is called weathering.

Another source is salt-forming minerals in the earth’s crust beneath the oceans. Water break in the seafloor through fractures, gets superheated, and returns to the surface with its cargo of dissolved minerals. Hydrothermal vents pour out the resulting chemical soup into the sea.

In a reverse process that has a similar end result; undersea volcanoes expel large amounts of hot rock into the oceans, where the rock releases chemicals into the water.

An additional source of minerals is the wind, which carries particles from land out to sea.

All these processes make seawater a solution of practically every element known. The major salt component, however, is sodium chloride i.e. common table salt. It makes up 85 percent of the dissolved salts and is the primary reason why seawater tastes salty.

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