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What's Current

Convection Currents:

What About Salt?

Teachers were asked to design their own experiments to determine what role salinity might play within our oceans.

Some of their findings included:

• Salt water disperses more rapidly within warm water than within cold water.

• Salt water sinks in both cold water and hot water.

• Salt water is denser than fresh water.

• Temperature plays a larger role in determining density than does salinity.

• Layering/stratification occurs due to differences in density.

• Buoyancy is greatly influenced by salinity.

Teachers found that their experiments led to further questions. Teams wanted to:

• measure the temperature more accurately

• measure the amount of salinity more accurately

• figure out a way to determine the salinity

• have more equipment available to extend their experiments further

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