Why don't the oceans freeze?
by 
game masta
ANSWERS: 11
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Salt water is harder to freeze than fresh. Even so, large amounts of it do freeze in the polar regions where it is cold enough.
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The amount of water and salt in them contribute to it. Also it is circulated, warm to colder sea. In Arctic and Antarctic, they do, ice cap at the North Pole is over the ocean. As the top layer freezes it throws away salt where by making lower layers saltier and more difficult to freeze. Also this saltier layer is thicker which slowly settles down bringing warmer water to the top which again prevents the whole ocean to freeze.
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Too salty. thats why salt is used to melt ice and snow on the highways.
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As has been intimated it is all to do with temperature and concentration. You will know that the freezing point of 'pure' water is 0 centigrade (273 Kelvin). As you add impurities (salt, in the case of the oceans) it becomes a solution and the more concentrated the solution the lower the freezing point, until you have a saturated solution (won't hold any more salt), which freezes at around -20C. If ambient temperature becomes lower than this then the ocean will start to freeze. So if you find yourself in Northern Russia in the middle of winter you might well find frozen seas abound.
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Exactly what they all said!
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Moving water never freezes. Its why we leak our taps in winter.
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In addition to the salt, water expands and floats when it freezes. If ice didn't float, the ocean would eventually freeze solid.
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but it does. look at the north pole.
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Here are some pics of Niagra Falls frozen over. I'll try the HTML tag. If it doesn't put the pics up (I've never done this before), then I'll edit this and just put the link in. These are greatly reduced, because I have an older, slower computer. Still, they do show Niagra frozen (this was in 1911...some say this has happened 3 to 5 times since records have been kept, but engineers have installed something to keep it from happening again). It didn't work :P -- here's the link http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e235/mystified08/NiagraFrozen3a.jpg
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Due to a chemical phenomenon known as depression in freezing point.Had there been pure water in oceans they would have freezed .But as they contain dissolved salts so their freezing point plunges down to lower value.
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Because the ocean is incredibly salty, and when there is a large amount of salt in water, it will not freeze. Thus, when people climb Mount Everest, they bring salt water with them. This is why the ocean does not freeze.
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