Must Be True Questions - - Question 3

Water vapor evaporated from the ocean contains a greater proportion of oxygen 16 and a smaller proportion of the heav...

Shirnel April 12, 2020

Every explanation I have read on here is confusing

Can someone please explain why B is the answer in plain English without using analogies, so I get the concept of ratios and the way it is used in LR.

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BenMingov April 12, 2020

Hi Shirnel, thanks for the question!

Let me try my hand at this and hopefully this will resolve the confusion.

Just to keep things simple. The only thing the passage is really saying as far as ice ages are concerned is the following:

Water vapor from oceans has more O16 and less O18 than vapor from seawater. The makeup of oceans (O16 vs O18) typically is unaltered because seawater vapor precipitates back into the ocean. So take any arbitrary ratio of O16 vs O18 that is evaporated from the ocean. The seawater evaporation that precipitates back should make it up.

E.g. the ocean vapour = 60% O16 and 40% O18.

It should then receive 60% O16 and 40% O18 to keep it unaltered by evaporation.

If the seawater's vapor is replenishing the ratio to keep it at 60% O16 and 40% O16 in the ocean, then when it the precipitation gets trapped as ice (ice age), the seawater just lost vapor that was at least 60% O16. Now that it has less O16 than it did before evaporation, its proportion of O18 has gone up.

Please let me know if this was clear. If not, I will try to explain in some other way!

jaspreetkaur June 25, 2020

Why would the O18 go up?