HOW THE WATER CYCLE WORKS
I am learning to inform my audience through an explanation
By Luka
When you drink water do you ever stop and think that water you drink each day maybe over a million years old or even from the other side of the world? Or it could even be water that the first caveman drank? Well that is all because of the water cycle... All the water on earth today every drop is all the water there has ever been on the planet. Did you know 97 percent of the earth's water is salt water leaving 3 percent as fresh water but only 1 percent of the freshwater is actually drinkable. The water cycle is so easy to understand even a five year old can understand. There are three main stages of the water cycle, precipitation, evaporation and condensation. Each stage has an important part to play in the water cycle it starts off with percipation.
Precipitation is the process where rain, sleet, hail or snow falls to the ground. When it falls it can be seen as a solid or a liquid. When the liquid or solid falls it would normally fall in lakes, streams, oceans and harbours. So after condensation when the clouds fill up then it falls and that's the process of precipitation. Once water has fallen and reaches the ground and it is then the next process of evaporation starts.
Evaporation is the next step after precipitation. Once the water has fallen to the ground you may think where does all that water go, where does that puddle on the ground go? Well that is when evaporation comes in. Evaporation is when a heat source is added to a liquid heating it up turning it into a gas. The water cycle uses the sun as a heat source. When the sun heats up the water on earth it changes the liquid into a gas called water vapor. The water vapours rise up as they get hotter, before collecting in the sky. An everyday example of this is a kettle boiling. The steam that comes out of the kettle will eventually turn into water vapour, a gas. The water vapour will rise and then began the process of condensation.
Condensation is when the water vapours collect together as little water droplets as they began to cool down. When the temperature in slows down the gas forcing the water droplets to reconnect. An example we can see is on a hot day when the water vapour in the air connect with a cold can of coke. The temperature drops making the water vapours connect making droplets on the outside of the can, this is condensation. In the water cycle condensation happens with water vapour that has cooled down in the sky, as they cool down they form clouds. The cloud will be fill of little water droplets, once the cloud gets too heavy it goes all the way back to precipitation.
And finally at the end of the water cycle, the next step is well everything because after the last stage of the cycle it repeats itself over and over again. This is how the water cycle recycles all the water that ever was on earth. We need to keep our water flowing in the water cycle or else there will be no life on earth. Water is a key part to the survival on earth.
