Percentage of water on our planet to drinkable water.
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How the water cycle runs.
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Evaportion off a lake
How plants collect and lose water.
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Condensation on a window
Precipitation in different forms.
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Here is a image of a form of runoff. Wailua Falls in Hawaii. Click on image to enlarge
Dirty water verses clean water. Which would you want to drink?
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Why do we need clean water?
Why do we need clean water?
Did you know that lots of things in our life uses clean water, from the water out of our kitchen sink to the clothes we wear? With doing experiements and Brownie Try-It requirments I learned that water is everywhere. Water can sometimes be changed into something else and sometimes it wouldn't change. Lets pretend for a second, take two glasses and put water in them, now take one of those glasses and put about a cup of salt in it and stir unitll you can't see the salt. Now take the other glass and put about a cup of dirt from outside in it and stir it untill you can't see the dirt. Now Take a drink from each glass, How did they taste? I didn't like the taste of either of them. If all you had to drink was either salt water or water with dirt in it, which would you drink?
You might think we have plenty of water to live because when you look at a picture of our planet there is more water than there is land because we have huge oceans, this is wrong. I found out that we only have 3% drinkable fresh water and 97% is water you don't want to drink because it is made from salt water in our oceans, it also doesn't help when we have trash and junk in our rivers, streams and ponds.
Half of our drinkable fresh water is frozen in glaciers and our polar ice caps and the other half if under the ground, which is called groundwater. Groundwater sometimes take a very, very long time to come back up so we can use it, this is why it is very important to try to keep the water which we have now and what does come up from the ground clean because all that water rides on this wheel called the water cycle. While this water is riding the water cycle it can get hurt. Let me first tell you a about the water cycle.
Evaporation
There is this thing called Evaporation and when the sun heats up the water from our oceans to our rivers that water turns into vapor or steam and goes up into the air. to see how steam or vapor moves you can turn on your hot water to your shower or put a pot on the stove and heat it up.
Sweating from people and plants
Another water source our planet has is the sweat from us and plants, people and plants don't sweat the same way. When we sweat the water could be coming from out arm, face or even legs and this is called; perspiring. When plants sweat it's called, transpire and their water only comes out of their leaves. These two forms of sweat needs help to get back up into the air because it can't do it all on its own, this is called Transpiration.
Transpiration
Transpiration is basically like a car, when we need to go somewhere we jump into a car and go down the street, which is called, transportation. When water needs to get back up into the air it gets help from transpiration, wow look how the words look almost alike.
Condensation
This happens when these very little water droplets from water vapor or steam gets cold and changes back into a liquid and forms a cloud and the wind carries the cloud over the land. If you would like to see this change happen in front of your eyes at home please visit our learning activity section.
If you are very lucky and the sun is hitting these little droplets right, you will see a rainbow.
Precipitation
As the air cools, those very little water droplets get bigger and heavier so the air can't hold it anymore and it falls back down to the ground. When water comes back down it can take the form of rain, snow, sleet, fog and hail depending on the air temperature.
When water comes back down to the ground it could go straight to our rivers and oceans but some of it does end up back on land. When water ends up back on land it is sucked up by the ground to feed bugs and plant life, what is not used it turned into ground water.
Runoff
The water that falls on the land it could go into the rivers, lakes and other places, if the ground can't suck up all the water that just fell it will run freely and then hopefully all this water will flow back into the oceans.
And then the whole wheel cycle begins again....
When we go outside to play or work we get dirty and when we come in we take a shower to get clean, any dirty clothes we have gets put into the washing machine to get washed so they can get clean too. Because this whole water wheel cycle is outside there are lots of things that could make water so it is undrinkable for us and other things that need it to live. If the water outside becomes so dirty that we can't drink it, it's not like you can ask your mom or dad to put that water in the washing machine and wash it so it is clean again.
I have learned that water is a resource and we should use our resources wisely.
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