A water cycle is basically a cycle of the water’s journey. The water cycle works by liquid evaporating into water vapor, condensing to form clouds, and precipitating back to earth in the form of rain and snow. There are seven steps (evaporation, condensation, precipitation, interception, infiltration, percolation, transpiration, runoff, and storage.) But we are going to highlight the four main ones. (Evaporation, Condensation, Precipitation, and Collection)
What is evaporation?
This is the first step of the cycle before repeating. Water from oceans, rivers, lakes, and other bodies of water is heated by the sun and turns into water vapor, rising into the atmosphere. As the sun heats the water, the water turns into gas, in other words, vapor. The sun heats up the water and makes the water molecules move fast—fast enough that it allows the water molecules to escape and turn into gas.
What is condensation?
This is the second step in the water cycle. This is when the water vapor rises into the atmosphere and on the way the vapor cools down, as it cools down it turns back into tiny water droplets. This is how clouds are formed. The water molecules cool in the area as they rise up; they slow down and join other water molecules, then together they form a cloud.
What is precipitation?
This is the third step of the water cycle; this is when the droplets in the clouds combine and become too heavy, then the drops fall to the Earth as rain, snow, or hail. This is how the water returns to earth. As the water becomes heavy, the water falls back to earth, but sometimes in other conditions the cloud would be colder than normal and the water would freeze like how water freezes if you put some in the freezer. Then that frozen water comes down like normal rain but frozen—that is now what you call hail or snow.
What is collection?
This is the last step of the water cycle until it gets repeated. The water that falls to Earth is collected in oceans, rivers, lakes, or the ground, and the cycle starts over again. Did you know that 97% of the world’s water is stored in the oceans?
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