All our rainwater emanates from the sea, which is salty. Rainwater is freshwater. What happened to the salt?

Answer 1

How did the water transform from ocean water to rain water? Through evaporation. Salt does not evaporate with water. Do an experiment where you mix salt into water to form a solution. Then pour it onto a saucer and leave it out to be evaporated. In a day or so you'll see that after all of the water has evaporated all you have left is salt (and whatever else was in the water).

Answer 2

A good response is to examine the Great Salt Lake, in Utah, USA.
In and around this natural basin at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, water has been collecting for the past million or so years. Atmospheric evaporation has pemitted the moisture on the surface to exchange its state from liquid to vapor. This Vapor has a diminished capacity to hold solid particle when compared to liquid. This event occurs for all moments, and on all water surfaces exposed to atmosphere.
Statistically, the vapor has a better chance to escape the locus, to be borne away from the body of liquid (lake) than does the liquid moisture, so as the vapor leaves, its included solid particle (salt) content is less than the lake. This event compounds for all moments, so the liquid is always getting saltier as more water leaves thru evaporation. New water is arriving every year in the rainy season, and it brings salts with it. The moisture has a great opportunity to leave the lake on the wind, while the salts may not travel along.
If you have stood on an ocean beach and smelled the ocean on-shore breeze, then you know that the water vapor carries some of the salt with it, Then, if you taste the water, it is always more salty than is the breeze.
The Great Salt Lake is a profound example of this phenomenon. A more extreme example is the nearby Bonneville Salt Flats, where a similar drain basin is so full of salt crystals, runoff water evaporates or gets absorbed by the resident salt before it can pond into a lake.

Answer 3

Looking at the Water Cycle I would have to say that since water evapourates from the sea salt water and then condenses in clouds which in turn cause precipitation (rain), the salt is lost during the evapouration process. If one were to boil a pot of salted water, one notices that whereas the water evapourates the salt remains until you get a dessicant of salt at the end of the boiling process. Basically, the salt stays in the sea water while the water that evaporates turns into rain.

Answer 4

The salt stays in the sea and that is how the sea became salty. And keeps getting saltier. Because the fresh water brings more salt into the sea by flowing over rocks and soil and picking up the salt in the same.

Answer 5

1st off, ALL rainwater does not come only from salty bodies of water. It can come from lakes, rivers, oceans, swimming pools, etc.

"So why does the water vapor lack salt? Dissolved salt consists of ions- electrically charged versions of atoms. In liquid water, the electrically charged parts of the water molecules arrange so that on average their positive parts are near the negative ions, and the negative parts nearer the positive ions. That greatly lowers the energy of the ions, compared to the energy they would have off on their own. In other words, the ions stick to the liquid water. They actually stick to it much better than the water molecules do. So water molecules evaporate off into vapor, leaving the salt behind."

http://van.physics.uiuc.edu/qa/listing.php?id=1499
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Answer 6

When water evaporates into the atmosphere the salts are left behind. The amount of energy needed to raise salt ions to a gaseous state (with a liquid state in between) is far greater than what the sun provides.

Answer 7

When sea water evaporates to water vapour, and as salt doesn't vaporise, it stays in the sea.
(A de-salination of sea water process is used to produce fresh water from the sea).
When the water vapour condenses to rain, it will eventually find its way back to the sea.
(It's called the Earth's "Hydrologic Cycle".

Answer 8

When water evaporates, the salt is separated from the water.

Answer 9

The evaporation process leaves anything behind that is not Hydrogen or Oxygen.

Answer 10

?!? didn't you pay attention in Earth Science class? Natural de-salination.