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Joe Blanton, director of our Research Correspondence staff, oversees the answering of 50,000 queries and comments addressed to the National Geographic Society annually. Each week he posts answers to three of the most interesting inquiries received online at Glad You Asked. Unfortunately, individual e-mail replies are impossible.

Magazines, clocks, and seawater ...

What can I do with my collection of old NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC magazines?

As much as we love them, those yellow-bordered marvels have a way of taking over the bookshelf and the attic, don’t they? And they’re pretty darned near indestructible. Someone once suggested that old NATIONAL GEOGRAPHICS might be stacked six high, coated with a waterproof substance, and used as building blocks. If you feel you must part with them and you’re not looking to build something, you might check with nearby libraries, nursing and retirement homes, prisons, hospitals, or schools to see if they would welcome your donation. Such a gift is usually well received. A set of NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC magazines, coupled with our cumulative National Geographic Index, makes an excellent resource.

Is Big Ben the name of the tower or of the clock itself?

Well, it starts with the bell. Prior to the 1859 dedication of the great clock in the Palace of Westminster, the honorable members of Parliament were debating the issue of what to name the bell that would toll the hours. And a behemoth of a bell it was—nine feet (2.7 m) in diameter and 13 1/2 tons (12 metric tons). Sir Benjamin Hall, the amply-girthed first commissioner of works, rose to speak but was cut short by a shout from the back of the room: “Let’s call it ‘Big Ben!’” The name stuck.

That moniker might also have had its genesis in another Big Ben current in London in those days. Ben Caunt, a prize fighter of gargantuan proportions, was known by that name, and Londoners had taken to applying it to anything that was largest in its class. That may have been what prompted the Parliament shouter. At any rate, Big Ben has come to signify not just the bell but the clock itself, as well as its 316-foot (96-meter) tower.

Why is seawater salty?

The earth’s rocks naturally contain salts. Over the eons, rains have eroded and broken down rocks, and rivers have carried the dissolved material, including salts, to the sea. The process continues today. Some of the salts came from the rocks in the ocean floor. Others originate beneath the seafloor and are brought up with other minerals that constantly spurt from underwater volcanoes. And finally, the process of evaporation extracts water, in the form of vapor, from the ocean’s surface, leaving the salts behind. All this saltiness makes up about 3.5 percent of the content of seawater. Much of it is sodium chloride, the same stuff you sprinkle on your food.