🌊 Under the waves

Yes, move your arm up and down in a smooth curve, just like a wave rolling across the sea.

Rain picks up tiny bits of salt and minerals as it flows over rocks and soil. Rivers carry those minerals into the ocean, and the water keeps evaporating while the salt stays behind. Rivers and lakes stay less salty, since their water keeps moving and refreshing itself.

The ocean is usually blue or green, though it can look grey or even a bit brown near the shore.

Sunlight looks white, but it is actually a mix of every colour. When that light hits the ocean, the water swallows up the warm colours like red, orange, and yellow, but bounces the cool blue back to your eyes. That is why the ocean often looks blue, especially in clear, deep water. The exact shade of blue or green you see can also change depending on how deep the water is, how clear it is, and even what is reflecting off the sky above it.

Yes, pat your hands flat on water and watch the little drops fly up and away.

Most ocean waves are actually created by wind blowing across the water's surface, transferring some of its energy into the water and pushing it up into rolling shapes that travel onward across the sea. The stronger the wind, and the longer it blows steadily across open water, the bigger and more powerful the waves that build up can become. When a wave finally reaches shallow water near a beach, it slows down at the bottom while the top keeps moving, which causes it to rise up and eventually curl over and crash onto the shore.

The ocean sounds like a soft whoosh as the waves roll in and out over the sand.

The Moon's gravity pulls on Earth's oceans, and that pull tugs the sea into a small bulge on the side closest to the Moon. As Earth spins through the day, different coastlines pass through that bulge and then move away from it, so the water comes in and goes out roughly twice a day.