Experiences ocean

Experiences ocean

To understand the explanations given above, we conducted some experiments.

a) What is the influence of temperature?

Hypothesis : The water temperature plays a role in the movement of oceanic water masses.
Verifiable consequence : If the hypothesis is correct then we should observe a shift of water in a thermal gradient.
It performs the following experiment to test this hypothesis :

Explanation of the experience : The hot water, colored red, moves in borrowing spreads so the top tube on the cold water colored blue and shoot down the tube. The cold water moves via the lower tube and passes under hot water. Arriving in the compartment hot, cold water is warmed gradually and slowly rises up the tube, driven by cold water coming through the bottom tube.
The witness made at uniform temperature, but with two different dyes in each compartment shows a lack of movement of water, which shows that water movements observed are indeed due to a thermal gradient.
Water weighing and calculating their density also shows that the difference in temperature ultimately results in a difference in water density.
Conclusion : Hot water is less dense than cold water, this difference in density causes a flow of water.

Photos from our own experience

The hot water circulates well colored red by the top tube.
The hot water, less dense colored in red moves and pushes the cold water down.

We performed the same experiment by exchanging dyes, ie hot water is now colored blue and red with cold water.

Regarding the Gulf Stream, the warm equatorial water moves poleward at the surface and cold polar water runs deep towards the equator.

b) What is the influence of salinity?

Hypothesis : The salinity of the water plays a role in the movement of oceanic water masses.
Verifiable consequence : If the hypothesis is correct then we should observe a movement of water along a salinity gradient.
It performs the following experience :

Explanation of Experiment 2 : The colorful salt water moves towards the side containing fresh water through the tube bottom, while fresh water moves to the salty side by the top tube. And fresh water is found on the surface of both tubes and salt water at the bottom. It is concluded that fresh water is less dense than salt water.
A witness with salt water of the same concentration but different colors in each compartment shows a lack of water circulation, so the traffic is observed linked to the difference in salinity.
The weighing of salt and fresh waters shows that the difference in salinity ultimately results in a density difference.
Conclusion: Fresh water is less dense than seawater and this density difference causes the flow of water.

Photos from our own experience:

The colorful saltwater moves through the tube bottom.

We performed the same experiment but changing colors. The water is colored blue freshwater colorless and water is salt water :

After a few minutes, the mixture begins to equalize :

Regarding the Gulf Stream, making sea ice causes an increase in salinity, so the density of ocean water around the sea ice of this, the pole, the very cold temperatures cause the formation ice in winter. This ice is not salty, so the more ice, more ocean water around the sea ice is salty. The water that reaches the pole from the equator, so cool and will be increasingly saline thus becoming more dense, which makes his dive.