Most lakes and ponds freeze during the winter months in Vermont. This is not true for oceans. This experiment was designed to determine if the salt would cause water to not freeze or maybe lower the freezing point.. The outcome might help explain why oceans don’t freeze or why salt is used on roads on cold snowy and icy days.
Salt was dissolved in 6 beakers of water, and another 6 were left without salt. I put all 12 beakers in a freezer and measured the temperature at which a film of ice formed on the surface of the water.
The temperature of both salt and “fresh” water dropped at the same rate. However, the average temperature at which the “fresh” water froze was 1 degrees Celsius, while the average freezing temperature for the salt water was -2.73 degrees. From this I concluded that one possible reason why the ocean doesn’t freeze is because it contains salt and the freezing point has been lowered.
