We all know the five oceans of the world the Pacific Atlantic Southern Arctic and
Indian Oceans if you look at a world map it may seem like there's just one big
body of water and then land on top of it but what many people don't realize is
there are quite vivid borders between these oceans the most prevalent of which
is the border between the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean I'm Charlie and today
we're going to look at why these two oceans don't mix but first why not
subscribe and press the notification pill to check out this image of the
Atlantic and Pacific oceans meeting it seems like there's a real border between
these oceans but of course there isn't some kind of invisible ball separating
these two oceans these oceans are right next to each other and there's nothing
separating the two of them but for some reason they don't seem to be flowing
into each other otherwise they'd just be one solid color not two colors but as
you can see the Pacific Ocean is a darker blue while the Atlantic Ocean is
more of a greeny blue you may think that water is water so why don't they just
mix and flow together well what many people don't realize is
there's a lot of things which can impact waters mixing as we see from these two
oceans water can look very different and water can also have a totally different
chemical makeup even if it is water the waters from the Atlantic and Pacific
Ocean have a totally different density and chemical maker the biggest factor is
the difference in the salt in the water this is what's known as aqua salinity
and this border between waters actually has a name it's known as an ocean Cline
which basically means a split between two bodies of water which can be seen by
the human eye if you fly over the sea in an airplane and look down you'll likely
notice some of these from your window but sometimes they can be tricky to spot
so why is the border between the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean so obvious
well it's because it's not just an ocean Cline instead it's an ocean halocline
this is basically where two different fully support to have drastically
different amounts of silt in this case the Pacific Ocean has a lot less salt
that's what gives it that deep blue color but the Atlantic Ocean has much
higher levels of Sol which gives it that kind of green tinge
for a halocline to really be visible by the human eye there needs to be five
times more salt in one ocean than in the other you can actually do a pretty cool
science experiment at home and you may have even done this in biology class go
down to the beach and collect some salt water in a glass then in that same glass
pour in some fresh water maybe from a water bottle you'll see that the two
waters don't mix and you'll be able to see a subtle difference between the two
colors this is a way to make your own ocean klein in a glass of course in a
glass that this will mean that the ocean Klein it will be horizontal and not
vertical like in the ocean I'm sure in physics class we've all done the
experiment with density in liquids your teacher probably poured honey
dishwashing soap water and oil into a glass all of these different colored
liquids won't mix because they're different densities the honey which is
the most dense will be on the bottom and the oil which is the least dense will be
on the top well this is kind of the same thing with ocean clients in the case of
the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean if the Pacific Ocean is the least dense of the
two that's because it has less salt meaning it weighs less and because the
Atlantic Ocean has more sold it's more dense meaning it weighs more so if you
put some of the Atlantic Ocean and some of the Pacific Ocean into a glass the
Pacific Ocean would be on top and because the Atlantic has a higher
density it would be on the border but why does that not happen on the ocean
after all the border between these oceans is horizontal not vertical well
one of the reasons is the densities are not that different although they are
different they're not as different as they may be for example if you replaced
the Atlantic Ocean with honey then that would go underneath the Pacific Ocean
then all you'd see is the Pacific Ocean and then at the underlying layer would
be honey mmm swimming in honey another reason why this ocean border is not
horizontal is because of inertial forces basically because the earth is spinning
this means that there is Coriolis force this then deviates these oceans from
their natural course this is what gives us gravity the earth spinning this
causes the Atlantic Ocean to flow counterclockwise and the Pacific Ocean
to flow clockwise this means the two flows different so they will not mix but
there's another ocean based question many people wonder that is why do you
sometimes see square waves in the water well we all know that normal waves
from winds wind blows the water and then this makes away these are known as swell
waves but sometimes storms in other oceans can cause what are known as
crashing waves these are waves caused by storms sometimes far away and not just
wind so in a local wave caused by wind and
the crashing wave meets this can cross the waves this is often known as a cross
see which makes square waves but if you ever see square waves then get out of
the water immediately that's because if you get caught up in them you'll never
get out the waves are basically trapping you in almost like quicksand and you'll
likely get pulled under the water thankfully cross seas only occur very
rarely but when they do occur and people get stuck in them if the people often
don't make it out alive but now it's time to make your opinion heard do you
have a fear of the ocean according to one survey 70 percent of people do so
vote in the poll on the top right corner and make your opinion known if you want
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