Virtual ghost
Complex paradigm
- Joined
- Jun 6, 2008
- Messages
- 22,098
But we also have a Great Salt Lake. The real question bothering me is how we can have something that is both salty and a lake. The existence of this implies that chemical composition is unrelated to whether something is a lake or sea.
The problem is that you have to overcome the stereotype that lakes can't be salty. Most of them aren't but this isn't universal rule.
However salt was just one of the arguments. While the other two were that Great lakes don't have sea connection to the oceans and they are evidently above sea level. Therefore these two arguments evidently apply to the Great Salt lake as well. What means that Great Salt lake scores about 2.5 points out of 3 in being a typical lake. The only thing that is kinda off is chemistry to some degree.
I mean the lakes are basically some random holes on the continental mass that got filled with water. In other words I said that one of the differences between a lake and a sea is chemical composition. However that doesn't apply just to the salt since there are many other chemical compounds that can be found in the water. While the water isn't really the full story either, because typical chemical composition of the lake bottom and sea bottom isn't the same. For example the bottom of the Atlantic has volcanic background since it is being made by the volcanic ridge that stretches all the way from Greenland to Antarctica. Therefore as the ridge generates new sea bed the both coasts of the Atlantic are spreading apart. While with Great Salt Lake you don't have that, it is just a body of water that filled a hole on top of a continent. Which by the way has different chemical composition than the the ocean bed. Plus Great Salt lake has no direct connection of the oceans and it is way above global sea level. Therefore calling it a Great Salt lake is basically the most correct name you can pick for the place.