why is the sea salty yet most large lakes are fresh water?

Answer 1

Most lakes have water flowing out of them as well as into them. Most of the salt and other minerals carried by the incoming water are carried out by the outgoing water. The oceans, the Great Salt Lake, the Dead Sea, and some others have no water flowing out. The only way for water to leave is by evaporation, leaving the salt and other minerals behind. Over time, the mineral concentration increases.

Answer 2

This is due to the fact that the sea has been collecting the water from rivers for millions of year. Therefore the sea has millions of year of concentration of minerals. The water in lakes, although slowly, does move and flow into the sea. The water in lakes does not have the same concentration level as the sea and therefore not as minerally or as we call it salty.

Answer 3

Well most large lakes don't have water running into them (i.e. a river) to carry all the salt into them and if they do have rivers running into them they usually have rivers running out of the. And the sea is salty because all the rivers ( most rivers) in the world are pouring into it. Also taking there minerals such as salt and as this salt cannot evapourate in just sits there thus making the sea gradually salty. It's getting more salty every year. And at one piont millions of years ago the sea wasn't salty so this proves that that is right.

Answer 4

Lake water is mostly composed of the melted snow and rainfall, Lakes mostly have an out put which helps in keeping the water fresh. The sea is composed of water from rivers and rain and does not have a out source resulting in absorption of fresh water by evaporation leaving salts behind.lastly and most importantly Oceans are formed in the process of evolution (very large time frame) As earth contains large number of Salt ranges ( Hills) they are consumed by the Ocean thus forming a concentrate.

Answer 5

Fairly straight forward this one, lakes, rivers etc. although perhaps fed by underground springs, are ultimately derived from rain water. Sea water evaporates forming clouds which, in turn when conditions are suitable, deposit rain on land. The process of evaporation leaves the salts and minerals behind in the sea, a bit like the deposit/formation of lime scale on the inside of a kettle, leaving salt free water to fall on land as rain forming eventually fresh water lakes and rivers.

Answer 6

Because the water meets the lakes before the sea.

Answer 7

Because rain water isn't salty but is mostly made from sea water that has evaporated into the atmosphere leaving the salt content behind.

And lakes are mostly made from rain water

Answer 8

water evaporates from the seas (without salt) and goes into the weather system - it falls inland as rain and this forms rivers and lakes. These are salt free until they flow into the sea again

Answer 9

Why is the Ocean Salty?

All water, even rain water, contains dissolved chemicals which scientists call "salts." But not all water tastes salty. Water is fresh or salty according to individual judgment, and in making this decision man is more convinced by his sense of taste than by a laboratory test. It is one's taste buds that accept one water and reject another.
A simple experiment illustrates this. Fill three glasses with water from the kitchen faucet. Drink from one and it tastes fresh even though some dissolved salts are naturally present. Add a pinch of table salt to the second, and the water may taste fresh or slightly salty depending on a personal taste threshold and on the amount of salt held in a "pinch." But add a teaspoon of salt to the third and your taste buds vehemently protest that this water is too salty to drink; this glass of water has about the same salt content as a glass of sea water.
Obviously, the ocean, in contrast to the water we use daily, contains unacceptable amounts of dissolved chemicals; it is too salty for human consumption.

HOW SALTY IS THE OCEAN?...
How salty the ocean is, however, defies ordinary comprehension. Some scientists estimate that the oceans contain as much as 50 quadrillion tons (50 million billion tons) of dissolved solids.

If the salt in the sea could be removed and spread evenly over the Earth's land surface it would form a layer more than 500 feet thick, about the height of a 40-story office building. The saltiness of the ocean is more understandable when compared with the salt content of a fresh-water lake. For example, when 1 cubic foot of sea water evaporates it yields about 2.2 pounds of salt, but 1 cubic foot of fresh water from Lake Michigan contains only one one-hundredth (0.01) of a pound of salt, or about one sixth of an ounce. Thus, sea water is 220 times saltier than the fresh lake water. What arouses the scientist's curiosity is not so much why the ocean is salty, but why it isn't fresh like the rivers and streams that empty into it. Further, what is the origin of the sea and of its "salts"? And how does one explain ocean water's remarkably uniform chemical composition? To these and related questions, scientists seek answers with full awareness that little about the oceans is understood.


THE ORIGIN OF THE SEA...
In popular language, "ocean" and "sea" are used interchangeably. Today's seas are the North and South Pacific, North and South Atlantic, Indian and Arctic Oceans and the Antarctic waters or seas.
Scientists believe that the seas are as much as 500 million years old because animals that lived then occur as fossils in rocks which once were under ancient seas. There are several theories about the origin of the seas, but no single theory explains all aspects of this puzzle. Many earth scientists agree with the hypothesis that both the atmosphere and the oceans have accumulated gradually through geologic time from some process of "degassing" of the Earth's interior. According to this theory, the ocean had its origin from the prolonged escape of water vapor and other gases from the molten igneous rocks of the Earth to the clouds surrounding the cooling Earth. After the Earth's surface had cooled to a temperature below the boiling point of water, rain began to fall and continued to fall for centuries. As the water drained into the great hollows in the Earth's surface, the primeval ocean came into existence. The forces of gravity prevented the water from leaving the planet.

SOURCES OF THE SALTS...
Sea water has been defined as a weak solution of almost everything. Ocean water is indeed a complex solution of mineral salts and of decayed biologic matter that results from the teeming 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.

IF FRESH WATER FLOWS OUT TO THE SEA, WHY IS THE SEA STILL SALTY?...
The Mississippi, Amazon, and Yukon Rivers empty respectively into the Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic Ocean, and the Pacific Ocean, all of which are salty. Why aren't the oceans as fresh as the river waters that empty into them? 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.

Answer 10

sea are originally salty..but a lot of lakes occur when a place been watered(by rain or anything)....yet i still can`t understand ur question