It is interesting to know the cause of salty sea water. There are many factors that cause seawater to become salty. It deals with the physical processes of the water cycle.
The ocean covers 70% of the Earth’s surface, while ocean water accounts for 97% of the water supply on the Earth’s surface.
According to the Encyclopdia Britannica, seawater contains an average of 35:1,000 salts. Although at first glance it doesn’t seem like much. However, salt in the oceans reaches 120 million tons of salt per 1 bike of seawater. Meanwhile, the oceans hold 1.38 billion cubic kilometers of water.
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What is the cause of salty sea water? Check it out here!
Did you know that the water you drink every day actually contains elements of salt? However, you cannot taste the salt. This is because the concentration of salt is very low.
By the way, the salty taste in seawater can be caused by a number of factors. The first factor that gives sea water a salty taste is when it rains on land.
Water falls from the sky and then settles into the ground. In addition, water flows into the sea through rivers.
So, where does the salty taste come from? The answer is when water flows into the ocean. Mineral salts dissolved in water are transported.
Thus, the sea is full of mineral salts. Furthermore, when the water reaches the ocean, the water will experience evaporation.
Well, in this evaporation process, the water evaporates into the air. Meanwhile, mineral salts remain with the sea water.
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underwater volcanic activity
Another factor that causes salty seawater is underwater volcanic activity. In addition, volcanic eruptions are located under water.
This is almost the same as the previous procedure. Where seawater reacts with hot rock and dissolves many mineral salts. Some of the dissolved salt then reacts with the hot rock, then dissociates from the water.
You should know, it turns out that the salt content in seawater does not change from time to time. In fact, seawater has the same salt content over millions of years to billions of years.
The reason is that the salt content has now reached a steady state. In fact, it took millions of years to equalize the salt level in the ocean.
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unstoppable hydrological cycle
The amount of dissolved salt that comes from the river through the evaporation process will be the same every year. This is because the hydrological cycle continues uninterrupted.
The water cycle never stops, from the atmosphere to the earth. It then returns to the atmosphere through the processes of condensation, evaporation, precipitation and transpiration.
Whenever there is a hydrological cycle, water transports mineral salts from the land to the sea. Then the water evaporates back into the atmosphere. However, salt remains in the sea. In this way, sea water takes on a salty taste and its level continues to rise.
So in conclusion, salty seawater is caused by the distribution of dissolved salts from rivers, the process of seawater evaporation into the air, and volcanic activity beneath the ocean. However, this salty sea water has various benefits for humans, one of which is as a power plant. (R10/HR-Online)
