Some Answers

Now Playing: "The American Seasons", by Mark O'Connor. Track 1, "Spring".

Several of you have asked what the answers to these questions are. I posted these questions last month before my oceanography exam. Well, here are the answers, as near as I can give them.

What is water's latent heat of melting? Of vaporization?
The latent heat of melting, when ice turns into water, is 80 calories/gram. The latent heat of vaporization, when water turns into vapor, is 540 calories/gram.

What salts are in the ocean, and how do they get there, and where do they go?
Cl- comes from volcanic gas and goes into evaporites, which are weird-looking things like stalagmites on the seafloor in shallow places.
Mg2+ comes from weathering of rocks and is stored in the seafloor.
Na+ comes from weathering of rocks and goes into salt deposits, which are kind of like evaporites.
SO4 2- comes from volcanic gas and is stored in the seafloor.
Ca 2+ comes from weathering of rocks and is used to make the shells of microorganisms. These shells actually harden and turn into chalk. They make landmasses, like the famous "white cliffs of Dover" on the English coast.
K+ comes from weathering of rocks and gets turned by bacteria into clay.

What is the degree of the angle between hydrogen molecules?
The angle is 105 degrees.

What controls seawater density?
Salinity and temperature.

What are the three layers of the ocean?
The three layers are the surface mixed layer, where oxygen is being stirred in by the waves; the pycnocline, and the deep layer, where the water is really cold.

What is the Coriolis Effect? What is Ekman Transport?
The Coriolis Effect is the apparent turning of freely-moving bodies above a rotating planet. That's why hurricanes seem to have curved paths, and that's what drives some currents. Ekman Transport is the movement of water ninety degrees away from the direction the wind is blowing.

What are the greenhouse gases?
They are carbon dioxide, ozone, CH4, N2O, and the CFCs (about which environmentalists make such a stink).

What are the gases that are disolved in the ocean?
The main ones are oxygen, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen.

Where do icebergs come from?
Icebergs are bits of glaciers that break off when the glaciers hit the ocean.

So, those are my answers to these questions.