Water Cycle
This process happens when the Sun heats liquid water and changes it into water vapor (a gas).
What is evaporation?
This is Earth’s thin, solid outer layer where people live.
What is the crust?
This sphere includes all of Earth’s water, including oceans, rivers, lakes, glaciers, groundwater, and water vapor.
What is the hydrosphere?
This is a naturally occurring solid with a specific chemical composition and crystal structure.
What is a mineral?
This is the smallest unit of an element that still has the properties of that element.
What is an atom?
This is the process in which water vapor cools and changes into tiny liquid droplets that form clouds.
What is condensation?
This thick layer lies directly below the crust and is made of hot rock that can slowly flow.
What is the mantle?
This sphere is the layer of gases surrounding Earth, including the air we breathe.
What is the atmosphere?
This extremely hard mineral is commonly used in jewelry and is made of carbon.
What is a diamond?
When a metal bonds with a nonmetal, electrons are transferred. This type of bond is called this.
What is an ionic bond?
Rain, snow, sleet, or hail falling from clouds to Earth is called this.
What is precipitation?
This layer is made mostly of liquid iron and nickel.
What is the outer core?
This sphere includes all living things, such as people, plants, animals, fungi, and bacteria.
What is the biosphere?
Diamonds are created deep inside this Earth layer, under intense heat and pressure.
What is the mantle?
When two nonmetals share electrons, they form this kind of bond.
What is a covalent bond?
This process occurs when water soaks into the ground and can become groundwater.
What is infiltration?
This is Earth’s hottest and most dense layer. It is solid because of extremely high pressure.
What is the inner core?
This sphere includes solid Earth: rocks, soil, mountains, landforms, and the inside layers of Earth.
What is the geosphere?
This term describes how hard a mineral is, or how well it resists scratching.
What is hardness?
This force pulls objects toward the center of Earth and causes falling objects to speed up downward.
What is gravity?
Plants release water vapor from their leaves during this water-cycle process.
What is transpiration?
The continental crust is about this many miles thick in many places.
What is 22 to 44 miles deep (or thick)?
A fish lives in water, breathes oxygen from the water, and depends on rocks and sand on the bottom of a river. Name the three Earth spheres involved.
What are the biosphere, hydrosphere, and geosphere?
Diamonds reach Earth’s surface through fast-moving volcanic rocks called kimberlite pipes. These are a type of activity connected to this process.
What is volcanic activity?
Earth travels around the Sun at an average orbital velocity of about this speed.
What is about 67,000 miles per hour (about 30 kilometers per second)?