Why is rain not salty?

Question

If water is absorbed from the sea, why is our rain not salty......

Answer 1

Water is not absorbed from the sea. Water evaporates from the sea and other sources into the air. Salt does not evaporate - it stays behind. You can try this as an experiment: pour a very small amound of water into a large shallow bowl and mix with salt, stirring to dissolve the salt. After several days, the water will have evaporated, leaving the dried salt behind.

Answer 2

Sea water is salty because salt is too heavy to evaporate. Salt gets into the ocean through surface runoff into the ocean. This is when water runs over the ground and into a water source. Since the water runs over rocks and dirt, minerals get mixed in with the water, and end up in the ocean. These minerals are the salts in the ocean. The reason that water is fresh when it comes from a river, is because rivers are fast moving and have a low residency time (how long a certain water molecule stays in a certain body of water). They also have outlets, so the salt doesn't accumulate in the river. Oceans and seas have high residency times, and no outlets, so salt accumulates there. The fact that salt is too heavy to evaporate is the reason why water evaporated from the ocean and falling as rain somewhere else is not salty.
I really hope this helps!

Answer 3

As the water evaporates it leaves the salt behind (did you do the crystal on a string experiments at school?? That was a type of salt crystal left behind when the water evaporated)
When it falls onto earth the water absorbs salt from the land, which then drains into the sea - making it saltier

In places like the Red Sea where there is a lot of land and less water the sea get much saltier than in larger oceans like the pacific

Answer 4

There might be mini amounts of salt in it, like trace amounts of other elements, but the moisture in the atmosphere comes from many sources, like lakes, ponds, streams, other moist air masses. If you had a dish of salty water and left it out, the water would evaporate and leave behind the salt. Same thing would happen if you had it boiling. The water that escapes into the air does so because molecules at the surface have enough energy to escape into the air above it. It's the water molecules that do this, not the salt molecules. The salt would have to become a vapor to follow the water, and that means it would have to melt first (solid to liquid) and then turn to a gas. The temp for salt (NaCl) to do this is rather high, in the thousands of degrees.

The salty solution is not salt attached to the water, but salt inbetween the water molecules. So when you evaporate water, they are free to leave, and they leave behind the salt.

Answer 5

Evaporated water consists of hydrogen and oxygen, h2o, salt is Na something and this particle is too heavy for the water vapour to carry up wards. I think if you live near the sea then you can taste the salt in the air when it's raining.

Answer 6

Water evaporates as pure water. Salt and anything else is left behind. The impurities in rain are airborne particles that are picked up as the rain moves through the air.

Answer 7

I don't know but it's really playing on my mind now. It is evaporated from the sea so I can't understand why it's not salty!!

Answer 8

when the vapour leaves the ocean the salt doesn't leave with it.

The salt would need to be a much higher temperature to have a similar energy state.

Answer 9

The salt bit evaporate

Answer 10

the air purifys the rain and takes out the salt
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSzXlzDA7Sc&mode=user&search=