1. Fill two baby food jars with water. Dissolve the salt in one of the jars and add blue food coloring. Make sure to mark the jar “Salt Water.” Add a drop of red food coloring to the other jar and label it “Fresh Water.”
2. Hold a 3x5 index card on top of the jar of salt water and carefully invert the jar. Place the salt water jar on top of the freshwater container and have someone carefully remove the card. Observe the results.
3. Use the second set of jars to repeat the experiment. This time, invert the fresh water jar over the salt water jar. Remove the card, and observe the results.
4. Take both sets of jars, turn horizontally, remove the card and observe the results.
5. If evaporation causes surface water to be salty, where would you expect ocean water to be very dense? Does this correspond to where deep ocean currents originate? If not, can you explain why?
6. Consider what you learned from Part I of this experiment. Can you come up with a hypothesis for how deep ocean currents function, considering the salinity and temperature data that we currently know?