Why are lakes fesh water and the sea is salt water?

Question

Why is the Dead Sea salty and Lake Baikal fresh water for example?

Answer 1

Lets review some basic science, OK? Any body of water that has no outlet will do one of two things: Dry up or become salty / mineralized. The reason they become salty is because with no place for the water to go the only way it is removed is by evaporation. Since minerals (including salt) can't evaporate they are left behind and the water becomes salty / mineralized. Fresh water lakes are fresh because they are flushed by water flowing in and out of the lake.
The oceans are salty because they also have no outlet other than evaporation. They are the drain for all of the rivers on earth and therefore the depositary of billions of tons of minerals each year. Even with their enormous size, over a billion years or so they have become salty / mineralized.
Class dismissed!

Answer 2

Lakes are fed by water evaporated by solar energy. Most of the evaporated water comes from the seas and oceans but here's the thing, when the water evaporates it doesn't evaporate with NaCl (salt) still dissolved in it. That's why rain, lakes and rivers aren't salty.

I couldn't say why the sea is salty though, I guess it always has been but how it got so I don't know

Answer 3

I think it has to do with the rates of evaporation and the time it takes for fresh water to dilute NACL (sodium chloride) to parts per million (PPM). Lakes generally are basins where rain water and river runoff gathers before moving on to the oceans. If the lakes were not continually regenerated by rain water, they too would turn salty as the levels of sodium rise due to evaporation.
The oceans are so big, that the amount of fresh water emptying into them (carrying also much salt from the land) is small in comparison to the evaporation and residual buildup of salt.

Answer 4

LOL! The water contained in the full Salt Lake is NASTY. It supplies off a lake stench and early pioneers dumped all kinds of grossness in there!!! for sure, the Jordan River (contained in the middle East, as there is one in UT also) is fairly muddy too. And who's conscious what number of those with gross bacteria on their fingers have dipped into the basin on the community cathedral. i might want to ought to assert the holiest water of all comes from a sparkling mountain spring.

Answer 5

A contributing factor might also be that there is a lot of life in large bodies of water and they produce acids. When acids nuetralize, they make salt and water. So, I guess older bodies of water will have a degree of salinity.

Answer 6

usually, lake water comes from the melted snow from mountains - and snow is "fresh," while oceans and seas usually get their water from ice and glaciers that have gathered and melted. from antarctica, for example.

Answer 7

maybe because of the rock or whatever