why does salt water evoprate faster than plain water?
554126
because of the salt content, salt tends to draw water out, hence out in the open the salt would allow the water to be evaporated much more quickly than fresh water
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.
49521
Asording to the U.S. NAVY the AVERAGE salinity for seawater. is between 37 and 40 PPM (parts per million)  the worlds oceans are constantly getting saltier though.\nsalinity of the ocean is important in calculating sound speed velocity.  which is important for submarines as well as ships that hunt submarines.\n\nWe    HAVE TO   know how SALTY the ocean is.
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.
53745
That's a better question!\n\nHmmm....Let's see....Gee, that's a tough one!  Osmosis requires a concentration gradient, but since seawater is more concentrated than freshwater, you would expect the concentration gradients to be opposite, and you would expect that osmosis would work in one and active transport would be required in the other.\n\nHmmm.....let's see now....what could it be?\n\nCould it be something that is more concentrated in seawater AND freswater than it is in the cell?  Hmmm....let's see, what could that be?\n\nOH!  I'VE GOT IT!!\n\nThink hard, now, and you'll get it, too!  The answer is a little unexpected!  (you might even have to look in your textbook or class notes...hope you weren't sleeping that day!)
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.
797061
yes.  saltwater is salty, meaning it has a lot of ions.  Lots of ions conduct electricity.
629453
warm water dissolves ice faster than warm air because it can transfer and absorb heat faster than warm air of the same temperature
1019637
yes sound does travel faster in denser mediums, but when the temperature of a medium drops, then the viscosity of the medium drops as well, then even though the density would get higher, the sound would still slow down, because of the now less viscous medium.\na hotter medium would be more viscous then a cold one, therefore, sound travels faster in hot water, then it does in cold water
126230
Adding salt to water makes the water denser and as you may know denser liquids have higher boiling points. So if you boiled two pots of water at the same temperature, one full salt water the other not, it would take longer for the salt water to boil.
135812
Well for an eight year old....(sounds like an intelligent one to me though)... The reason water freezes slower is because the particles of salt and sugar get in the way of water making a ice crystal.  Salt takes longer because when dissolved it "ionizes" or breaks apart into 2 particles while sugar remains as one.  Salt having two particles it is able to disturb more molecules of water from making ice crystals. I hope that helps! It excites me to here a child of such a young age interested in such things.
875269
The density is different - sea water being more dense than fresh.\n\nFreezing point (lower for sea water) and boiling point (higher for sea water) would be slightly different.\n\nElectrical conductivity would be different (higher for sea water).\n\nAll these things are different - but the differences are also all due to the salinity difference that you mentioned.
429392
i'd say you have a basic understanding of molecular chemistry, micki.\n\nhowever, to improve your hypothesis, have it say:  I think the lower temperature the slower the salt will dissolve.  This is because the ions in a salt crystal require energy to dissolve away from the rigid crystal form the are in.  there is less energy present in cold water, therefore, the cold water will take longer to dissolve the salt crystals.
49972
As water flows in rivers, it picks up small amounts of mineral salts from the rocks 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.
12598
Because the water collects minerals from the floor of the ocean and so on and it isn't circulated or "refreshed" as a freshwater lake would be.  For instance, the Great Lakes are freshwater because they constantly drain out into the oceans.  The water is replenished all the time, not just sitting in one spot.  It doesn't give them time to collect the minerals to get salty.  If a lake, such as the Great Salt Lake in Utah, doesn't have this circulation (not sure what the scientific word is for it, but there is one), a place to drain so the water can be replenished, it becomes salty because it absorbs the minerals.
45495
While Mara gives a good description on the origin of salts in water (all water in general) it doesn't explain why the ocean is salty and streams, lakes etc are not.\n\nBascially the ocean has no outlet. Once water reaches the ocean, it stays there, along with all it's transported salts and minerals. \n\nThe Earth has weather though, and weather is driven in a large part by evaporation of water from the Earth's oceans. \n\nWhen you evaporate the water content, you fractionally reduce the volume of water, which therefore fractionally increases the concentration of salts and minerals. You should also know that some of these salts and minerals are removed from the oceans by precipitation into sediments on the ocean floors. So over the millions of years that the oceans have been around they have grown relatively saltier than the bodies of water that contribute to the oceans.\n\nThis process is exaggerated in trapped bodies of water that recieve a lot of heating. Take the Dead Sea for example - it's an enclosed body of water and since it does not have the vast volume of the world's oceans, the salt concentration process runs much faster. The Dead Sea is currently 6x saltier than the ocean. Salt lakes on any continent are another smaller example again - you'll find them in the USA and Australia to name but two examples.\n\nCommercial Salt production uses the same process, of evaporating water to leave behind salts.
24556
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.\n\nAs 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.\n\nA second clue to how the sea became salty is the presence of salt lakes such as the Great Salt Lake and the Dead Sea. Both are about 10 times saltier than seawater. Why are these lakes salty while most of the world’s lakes are not? Lakes are temporary storage areas for water. Rivers and streams bring water to the lakes, and other rivers carry water out of lakes. Thus, lakes are really only wide depressions in a river channel that have filled with water. Water flows in one end and out the other. \n\nThe Great Salt Lake, Dead Sea, and other salt lakes have no outlets. All the water that flows into these lakes escapes only by evaporation. When water evaporates, the dissolved salts are left behind. So a few lakes are salty because rivers carried salts to the lakes, the water in the lakes evaporated and the salts were left behind. After years and years of river inflow and evaporation, the salt content of the lake water built up to the present levels. The same process made the seas salty. Rivers carry dissolved salts to the ocean. Water evaporates from the oceans to fall again as rain and to feed the rivers, but the salts remain in the ocean. Because of the huge volume of the oceans, hundreds of millions of years of river input were required for the salt content to build to its present level. \n\nRivers are not the only source of dissolved salts. About twenty years ago, features on the crest of oceanic ridges were discovered that modified our view on how the sea became salty. These features, known as hydrothermal vents, represent places on the ocean floor where sea water that has seeped into the rocks of the oceanic crust, has become hotter, and has dissolved some of the minerals from the crust, now flows back into the ocean. With the hot water comes a large complement of dissolved minerals. Estimates of the amount of hydrothermal fluids now flowing from these vents indicate that the entire volume of the oceans could seep through the oceanic crust in about 10 million years. Thus, this process has a very important effect on salinity. The reactions between seawater and oceanic basalt, the rock of ocean crust, are not one-way, however; some of the dissolved salts react with the rock and are removed from the water.\n\nA final process that provides salts to the oceans is submarine volcanism, the eruption of volcanoes under water. This is similar to the previous process in that seawater is reacting with hot rock and dissolving some of the mineral constituents.\n\nWill the oceans continue to become saltier? Not likely. In fact the sea has had about the same salt content for many hundred of millions if not billions of years. The salt content has reached a steady state. Dissolved salts are being removed from seawater to form new minerals at the bottom of the ocean as fast as rivers and hydrothermal processes ar