ELI5: Why is the ocean salty?

Imagine you're making lemonade! You need water, lemons, and sugar. The ocean is like lemonade, but instead of sugar, it has salt.

Where does the salt come from? Think about rain. When rain falls on land, it's like a tiny detective! It picks up tiny bits of things like dirt and minerals as it flows over rocks and soil.

These minerals, including salt, dissolve in the rainwater. It's like when sugar dissolves in your lemonade!

The rainwater then flows into rivers and streams. These rivers are like roads that lead all the way to the ocean.

So, all that salty rainwater from the land eventually ends up in the ocean.

But the ocean is huge! Why doesn't the salt disappear?

The sun helps! It warms the ocean and causes water to evaporate. It's like when you leave a puddle outside, and it disappears after a sunny day.

• The water evaporates, but the salt stays behind.
• More salty water keeps flowing into the ocean.

So, the ocean is salty because rain picks up minerals from the land, carries them to the ocean, and then the water evaporates, leaving the salt behind.