Why do lakes have no salt and oceans do? How come they dont mix?

Question

its a sat night...u people are drunk and arent answering my questions correctly!

Answer 1

Actually, some lakes do have salt. For example, the Great Salt Lake in Utah, United States, or the Dead Sea in Jordan/Israel. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_lake

Take a look at the water cycle: surface water evaporates into the sky, where it forms as clouds. (The water evaporates out, leaving behind the mineral salts, so depending on the year and rainfall amounts some saline lakes can be more salty than at other times...) Eventually the wator vapor in the sky becomes to heavy and falls/precipitates to earth as rain/snow/hail/etc. This water flows downhill until it eventually reaches streams and rivers, which will flow to lakes or oceans, or will go deep into the soil to become stored groundwater for wells or springs. As the water flows, it picks up mineral salts from the soil on its way... (Some lakes are also fed water through underground springs, too.)

Having grown up in an area surrounded by marshland (aka swamps or bogs or wetlands) on the Atlantic coast, I can testify that there are areas where a freshwater river or stream (sometimes coming FROM a higher elevation lake) meet the saline ocean, and that water is called "brackish" as it is a mixture of both fresh and salt water. Depending on the tides, it could be more ocean salt water or river fresh water. They do in fact mix.

Side note: ever go into a cooking store or watch food shows on TV, and wonder where they get the fancy sea salt (rather than ordinary table salt)? Table salt is mined, whereas sea salt is created by evaporating the water out of seawater. (Kosher salt could be from either process.)
http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/ck_culinary_qa/article/0,,FOOD_9796_1696168,00.html

Answer 2

Most lakes were made by the melting of the glaciers and therefore do not have salt. There are some lakes that have salt (refered to as "brachish") like the Great Salt Lake in Utah. The reason why some water bodies are "salt" is because of the minerals produce by the earth that continuously contribute to the water. They do actually mix, for example the St. Lawarence seaway is a man made channel connecting the Atlantic to the Great Lakes, however the concentration of salt disipates as it goes further into the non salty Great Lake chain.

Hope this helps.

Answer 3

The 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.

Answer 4

Remember that lakes and rivers flow into the ocean, and never from the ocean into fresh water. Fresh water comes mostly from precipitation in the form of snow and rain. These originate as cloud, which are formed from evaporating sea water. Water evaporates quite nicely, but salt? Not so much. So the salt is left behind in the ocean while the water evaporates, forms clouds, falls as precipitation onto the land, collects into small rivers, flows into larger rivers, then (often) into lakes and ponds, and then finally into the ocean, where the cycle can begin again.

There are some places where fresh water flows slowly enough into the oceas that there is some mixing. Brackish water, which is often found in bogs and swamps, is the term for mixed fresh/salt water. Some parts of the oceans have remarkably different salinities too. The Baltic sea, because so much fresh water pours into it, and it has a very narrow connection with the North Sea, has a very low salinity content.

Answer 5

The Dead Sea is basically an inland lake and it is very salty. The minerals that wash away from the mountains wash down into the lakes (which are basically large pools in a river) on their way to the ocean. Once in the ocean, evaporation takes up the water leaving the mineral brine behind and the clean water washes down more mountain into the ocean. They are saltier than way up in the hills but never as salty as the ocean as the one lake is only getting minerals from 1 group of mountains. When you think of all the mountains on the planet and all the rivers and the ocean is one all around, it get the cumulative effect of all that land brine into it.

Answer 6

Salt Lake City, Utah has a "salt" lake and there are others. Most lakes are fresh water because they receive their water from underground springs and snow runoff, rainfall and have little or no salt in the area to dissolve into them. Lakes are usually above sea level and drain into the sea rather than the sea emptying into them.
http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/earthlakes.html

Answer 7

Water flows from the lakes to the oceans and not the other way around because most lakes are above the oceans, and gravity makes the water flow down.

Also, we're not all drunk. Some of us are high.




























No. I'm just kidding.




























Or am I?




























No. I am.




























Or maybe not!

Answer 8

okay so when it rains. It takes water from the ocean to get the rain. It doesnt take the salt with it. Then it will rain in the lakes. Or like Mountains. And go down ... VROOOOOMMM

Answer 9

well some lakes to have salt. and they cant mix because lakes usually separated from oceans from land...except most lakes have rivers that run into the ocean. the ocean does not run into the lake..that would be weird.

Answer 10

The Great salt lake has alot of salt.
Don't mix easily cause of density. I think.