How Salty is Seawater?

Have you ever wondered how much salt the Heavenly Father put into the ocean to make seawater? If you filled the average bathtub with ocean water (60 U.S. gallons), there would be about 19 pounds of salt dissolved in the tub!

Now, the ocean is much bigger than your bathtub. There are approximately one-and-a-half-billion billion tons of water in the sea. If God took all the salt out of the ocean and placed it on land, every nation in the world would be covered 500 feet deep in salt. That's a lot of salt!

You can get an idea of just how salty seawater is by making a glass yourself!

SUPPLIES:
  • a drinking glass
  • 8 ounces of water
  • one-half tablespoon table salt
  • a spoon

Fill the glass with eight ounces of tap water and add one-half tablespoon of ordingary table salt. Mix the salt thoroughly until it is dissolved. You may taste your artificial seawater, BUT DON'T DRINK IT! Pretty salty, eh?

The salt found in real saltwater, the kind that the Lord Jesus made, is mostly table salt (sodium chloride). Other ocean salts include: magnesium sulfate, calcium sulfate, and potassium chloride. Of course, seawater also contains a number of minerals, microscopic organisms, and large and small particles, so it is much more complicated than most of us realize. It seems that everything God has made is more complex than we first imagined, which only goes to show how great He is!

Find out more about creatures of the sea on our kid's learning pages!