What Makes Up Water

What Makes Up Water

Water is made up of two chemical elements, hydrogen and oxygen: One atom of oxygen and two atoms of hydrogen. Seawater is made up many chemical and physical properties. Some physical properties of seawater are; temperature, density and pressure.

Water can be seen in three different states depending on its temperature; a solid, liquid of gas. If the water has a below freezing temperature, it will be seen in its solid state as ice. As the temperature of the water begins to rise, the solid ice will begin to melt and form into its liquid state of water. If water is greatly heated up, the liquid water turns into its gas state known as steam.

A chemical property of seawater is known as salinity. Salinity is the total amount of solid material dissolved in water including dissolved gases but excluding dissolved organic substances. Drinking seawater is not advised due to the high volume of salt it contains. The more seawater ingested the more water will be pulled from the body to try and even out the incoming salt consumption. This would eventually cause dehydration. (Essentials of oceanography, ninth edition)

To make seawater drinkable to the point of no dehydration, a process called desalination comes into play. The method of desalination is a process of converting saltwater to fresh, drinkable water. There are many countries and many different ways to desalinate water. One process is called reverse osmosis. Osmosis transports water molecules from higher concentrations to areas of lower concentrations. Reverse osmosis works by applying pressure to force a solution through a membrane, retaining the solute on one side and allowing the pure solvent to pass to the other side. In the United States, Costal regions such as California use the reverse osmosis system. There is a plant in Santa Barbara which is able to purify nine million gallons of water each day. With this amount of water being converted, Santa Barbara is able to satisfy over 50% of its...