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Originally Posted by WebSlave
Yeah, kind of a serious question, to stimulate some discussion about just "things".
So that *free* oxygen that is not bound to hydrogen to form water is dissolved into what, exactly? What is it bound to that keeps it from just rising to the top of all the water and then exiting into the atmosphere?
And to keep this percolating, I was going to pose the question of where does the salt come from in the oceans, but that drills down to the question of where did the chlorine come from that makes salt? Whenever I look up where chlorine comes from, the answer is that it comes from salt. So this sort of sets up a "what came first, the chicken or the egg" sort of question.
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We need to consider the aspects of what comprises a gas, liquid and solid as a base to discuss this with any clarity. For simplicity consider them to all be pure (so we avoid discussing things like interactions to form complexes, where the water actually reacts with a material like the formation of carbonic acid by CO2 and water reacting directly). So in the gaseous stage the molecules of water are far apart as the heat energy absorbed by the water prevents the molecules from clumping together (condensation). If you add a second gas to the gaseous water it is easy to mix as there is a lot of spaces between the molecules (ignoring effects of pressure of each gas on the other). In liquids like water since the atoms move around readily there is room between the molecules for other molecules to dissolve into the water. The amount that can dissolve depends on a variety of factors such as the temperature of the water but liquids have space for other items to dissolve. (Ignoring for the moment polar versus non-polar (like oil and water solutions). Finally solids are bound together in a crystalline structure which prevents the molecules from freely moving around (except for glass which is apparently a really slow moving liquid), as water freezes you actually can get the exclusion of other dissolved materials like salt ions via a process called fractional freezing. An old example of this was the concentration of alcohol in barrels of fermented ciders where the barrel(s) were allowed to freeze and once frozen a hole was melted into it allowing the alcohol to be decanted. (I used this in college with free gallons of apple cider for fun).
The fundamental origin of most of the elements heavier that helium are via the fusion reactions in stars, novae and supernovas. So they are present in the formation of a planet and depending on the reactions it undergoes either before or after planet formation gives you the compound. If exposed to water you can get several processes that can result in exchanges of cations (like how the rusting process includes the flow of an electrical current or in batteries where the ions can migrate between anode and cathode).
Ed