Does the buoyancy of salt water differ from fresh water?

Answer 1

The more salt in water the more bouyant an object becomes. The salt makes the water more denser. Check out the dead sea or most salt content in any lake or sea.

The density of the salt water is greater than the density of an object. Items sink if their own density is greater than the density of whatever they are trying to float in. Items float to the top if their density is less than the density of what they are floating in, and items hang in the middle if the densities are the same. Adding in the salt gives the water a greater density than the water did had before, so the item doesn't float in freshwater.

It may seem odd that an enormous ship can float when steel is denser than water. However, if you look at the entire ship you see that there are many places filled with things less dense than water, like air. This means that the density of the entire ship is less dense than that of water and it floats.

Answer 2

The salt water has higher specific density than fresh water, which means that it is denser.

The buoyancy exerted by a liquid is equal to the weight of the displaced liquid. So thicker, heavier liquids will display more buoyancy. Another way of saying this is that objects will sink in a fluid to the extent that they are heavier (denser) than the fluid. If the average density of the object is less than the density of the fluid, it floats at the surface.

Answer 3

A molecule of water has the mass of the hydrogen and oxygen it contains. A salt water molecule also has the additional mass of the sodium and chlorine atoms dissolved in the water. Density is a measure of mass per volume, so the higher the mass, the higher will be the density.

Answer 4

Buoyancy is dependent on two factors: the force of the object pushing down, and the force of the object (in this case water) pushing up. If the object above weighs less than the object below, it will float better. Because salt water is more dense than fresh water, it weighs more than fresh water, thus giving it better buoyancy.

Answer 5

Yes, take two glasses, fill one with fresh water. Fill the other glass with salt water. Drop an egg in each glass, observe that the egg in the salt water floats, while the egg in the fresh water sinks.

Answer 6

For an object to float, it needs to be less dense than the water/liquid that it is in. Salt is less dense than water. Therefore, when you put a salty-ice cube into water, it will be more buoyant than a fresh water ice cube because it is less dense.

Answer 7

Answer the more SALT that is added to water the higher its specific gravity SG. The higher the SG. the less an object displaces it. Archimedes said that an object displaces its own weight. So therefore if the water is heaver the object is more buoyant.

Answer 8

Density equals the mass divided by the volume. Therefore the greater the mass the greater the density of the object. Salt water has a higher mass per volume than fresh water because the NaCl molecules have a greater mass than the H2O molecules.

Answer 9

Salt water is denser than fresh water (and the saltier it is, the denser it is; the unusually salty water of the Dead Sea is denser than that of other bodies of salt water). Buoyancy is produced by the displacement of water, and the denser the water is, the less has to be displaced to produce the same amount of buoyancy.

The reason why salty water is denser than fresh water is that when salt dissolves in water, it produces electrically charged ions; for example, table salt, sodium chloride (NaCl) produces the Na+ ion and the Cl- ion. These ions are strongly attracted to water molecules, because even though the water molecules are electrically neutral, they are polar molecules which have a negatively charged and a positively charged section. And because of the attraction that ions have for water molecules, the whole liquid becomes more dense. It should also be noted that salt water has a variety of soluble ionic compounds in it, not just sodium chloride, and some of them involve heavier elements such as calcium, whose atoms weigh a lot more than the oxygen or hydrogen atoms of which water is composed.