Eli5. Salt melts ice. Glaciers sit in an ocean of salt. Glaciers don’t melt.
In: Earth Science
Salt doesn’t melt ice.
It changes the freezing point of the water.
So instead of water changing from liquid to solid at 0C, that number decreases. How much it decreases depends on how much salt you add. The actual scientific concept is called “freezing point depression” and you can calculate the exact new freezing point if you know how much salt is added, but it’s not very ELI5.
The reason it seems like it melts the ice is because most places don’t maintain a constant temperature of -20C, which is relatively easy to depress water to with icemelt pellets. So, the ice then melts because it isn’t cold enough for it to stay frozen with the newly depressed freezing point.
If you try using salt to melt ice in places where it’s freakishly cold, it doesn’t really work very well.
The glaciers exist in places (the Arctic and Antarctic), which are generally freakishly cold.
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