Part -1:

1. What is the latent heat of vaporization? Of fusion? Which requires more heat to transform water's physical state? Why?

2. How does water's high latent heat influence the ocean? Leaving aside its effect on beach parties, how do you think conditions on Earth would differ if our ocean consisted of ethyl alcohol?

3. How does the seasonal freezing and thawing of the polar ocean areas influence global temperatures?

4. How does refraction permit sound to be transmitted in the ocean for thousands of miles?

5. What factors influence the density of seawater?

Part -2:

6. Where did the water of the ocean come from?

7. How are chemical methods of determining salinity dependent on the principle of constant proportions?

8. What was the earthly origin of the sodium and chloride ions in common table salt?

9. How are seawater's conservative constituents different from its nonconservative constituents? Give an example of each.

10. Which dissolved gas is present in the ocean in much greater proportion than in the atmosphere? Why the disparity?

Part -3:

1. What factors contribute to the uneven heating of Earth by the sun?

2. How does the atmosphere respond to uneven solar heating? How does the rotation of Earth affect the resultant circulation?

3. Why doesn't the ocean boil away at the equator and freeze solid near the poles?

4. How are the geographical equator, meteorological equator, and ITCZ related? What happens at the ITCZ?

5. What is a monsoon? How is monsoon circulation affected by the position of the ITCZ?

Part -4:

6. Why does water tend to flow around the periphery of an ocean basin? Why are western boundary currents the fastest ocean currents? How do they differ from eastern boundary currents?

7. What causes El Niño? How does an El Niño situation differ from normal current flow? What are the usual consequences of El Niño?

8. What are countercurrents? Undercurrents? How might El Niño be related to these currents?

9. What is the role of ocean currents in the transport of heat? How can ocean currents affect climate? Contrast the climate of a mid-latitude coastal city at an eastern ocean boundary.

10. Can you think of ways ocean currents have (or might have) influenced history?