Water Chemistry
This is the chemical formula for water.
(+50 bonus pts: Name the elements AND how many molecules of each.)
H2O
Bonus: 2 Hydrogen, 1 Oxygen
Water changes from a liquid to a gas during this process.
(+50 bonus pts: name the opposite process, from gas to liquid.)
Evaporation
Bonus: Condensation
When water evaporates into the atmosphere, it cools and changes into tiny liquid droplets. This process is called...
(+50 bonus pts: Water can go from a gas to a solid with this process and creates this form...)
Condensation
Bonus: Deposition; Frost, Snow, Cirrus clouds
About this percentage of Earth's surface is covered by water.
(+50 bonus pts: Earth gets its nickname ______ from this quality.)
71%
Bonus: The Blue Planet or Pale Blue Dot
When you leave the faucet running while brushing your teeth, you are wasting this valuable resource.
(+50 bonus pts: When people use water more efficiently, they are practicing this.)
Water
Bonus: Water conservation
Unlike many liquids, water can stick to itself. This property creates droplets and helps insects like Water Striders to walk across water.
(+50 bonus pts: list the mechanical properties that allow this to happen.)
Surface Tension
Bonus: Adhesion and Cohesion
At sea level, water freezes at this temperature in Fahrenheit.
(+50 bonus pts: name freezing temp in Celsius)
32 Degrees F
Bonus: 0 Degrees C
Most of Florida's drinking water comes from this enormous underground layer of rock that stores groundwater.
(+50 bonus pts: Name how many first-magnitude springs Florida has.)
Florida Aquifer
Bonus: More than 30
Even though Earth has a lot of water, most of it cannot be used for drinking because it is this type of water.
(+50 bonus pts: Most of Earth's freshwater is stored in...)
Salt water
Bonus: Glaciers or ice sheets
A toilet that keeps running after you flush or a dripping faucet can waste water because of this problem.
(+50 bonus pts: A faucet dripping once per second can waste this many gallons per year.)
Leaks
Bonus: Thousands
A water molecule isn't straight, it has this overall shape, which lends itself to many of its unusual properties.
(+50 bonus pts: This is the shape it creates when it is frozen.)
Bent molecule or V-shaped
Bonus: Hexagonal or 6-sized
True or False: Water shrinks when it freezes.
(+50 bonus pts: Explain why.)
False, it expands.
Bonus: becomes less dense / molecules stabilize with more room between them
In Florida, rainwater that soaks into the ground instead of flowing away is called this process.
(+50 bonus pts: The opposite process, water flowing away, is called...)
(+100 bonus pts: Florida has so much aquifer because it has a lot of this in its environment.)
Infiltration or Percolation
Bonus: Runoff
Extra bonus: Sandy soil (easier for water to seep into)
This process slowly breaks down rocks over time as moving water, ice, and rain wear them away.
(+50 bonus pts: Name one landscape structure that can be affected by this.)
Erosion
Bonus: Canyons, rivers, beaches/coastlines, mountains, sinkholes, etc.
Instead of planting a large grass lawn that needs frequent watering, many Florida homeowners choose these plants because they are adapted to local conditions and need less water.
(+50 bonus pts: These plants also provide this to the environment.)
Native plants
Bonus: Food and shelter for wildlife and pollinators, erosion protection, better rainwater infiltration, etc.
Because Oxygen pulls electrons more strongly than Hydrogen, one side of a water molecule is slightly negative and the other slightly positive. This makes water this type of molecule.
(+50 bonus pts: Name which element is positive and which is negative.)
Bonus: Oxygen (-) Hydrogen (+)
Many people think clouds are made of water vapor, but they are actually comprised of these.
(+50 bonus pts: Explain why clouds appear as white during the daytime.)
(+100 bonus pts: Explain why clouds appear as red or orange during a sunrise/sunset.)
Water droplets or ice crystals.
Bonus: Water is transparent, white comes from sunlight reflecting off of droplets or crystals.
Extra bonus: Sunlight has to travel through more air during sunrise/sunset, which scatters UV rays, leaving only the longest ones to reflect (red and orange).
Florida has more natural freshwater springs than any other state because rainwater slowly dissolves this type of rock underground, creating caves and underground rivers.
(+50 bonus pts: This type of landscape is called...)
Limestone
Bonus: Karst landscape
Earth's oceans help regulate the planet's temperature because water can absorb and store large amounts of this.
(+50 bonus pts: this weather anomaly is also affected by this.)
Heat or thermal energy
Bonus: Thunderstorms, tropical storms, hurricanes, etc.
When too much fertilizer or animal waste washes into rivers and lakes, it can cause huge growths of this that can remove oxygen from the water and harm fish.
(+100 bonus pts: The process of too many nutrients causing an ecosystem to become unbalanced is called...)
Algae / algal blooms
Bonus: Eutrophication
Scientists estimate that a single standard-sized drop of water (about 0.05 mL, or about 20 drops per milliliter) contains approximately this many water molecules.
A) 1.2 × 10⁶
B) 1.5 × 10⁹
C) 1.3 × 10¹²
D) 1.7 × 10²¹
D) 1.7 × 10²¹ (1.7 trilliard molecules)
Fun fact: If you counted one water molecule every second, without ever stopping, it would take about 54 trillion years to count the molecules in just one drop of water. That's nearly 4,000 times older than the age of the universe, which is about 13.8 billion years old.
Most people think "ice is just ice." Scientists have actually discovered approximately this many different crystal forms, or phases, of ice.
More than 20.
Fun fact: The ice in your freezer is only one type—called Ice I. Deep inside giant planets and icy moons, water molecules are squeezed into completely different crystal arrangements, creating entirely new forms of ice.
A raindrop that falls in Florida and soaks into the ground may eventually emerge from a spring, and this process takes this long to complete.
Years to thousands of years
Fun fact: Groundwater moves extremely slowly through tiny spaces and cracks in rock. Some water reaching Florida springs today may have entered the aquifer many years ago. Some of the water emerging from springs fell to the Earth before your grandparents were even born. This is why protecting groundwater is so important—pollution can remain underground for a very long time.
Earth has roughly 1.4 billion cubic kilometers of water. If all of Earth's water were placed into a single sphere, how big would that sphere be compared to Earth?
A) Smaller than the moon
B) About the size of the moon
C) Larger than the moon, smaller than the Earth
D) Half the size of Earth
A - Smaller than the moon
Fun fact: If you gathered all the water on Earth—oceans, ice, lakes, rivers, groundwater, and water vapor—it would form a sphere only about 860 miles (1,385 km) wide. Earth itself is about 7,900 miles (12,700 km) across.
The "blue planet" has a surprisingly thin coating of water.
A single hamburger can require roughly this much water to produce, including the water used to grow feed for cattle.
1,800 gallons of water
Fun fact: "Water footprint" is what we call the hidden amount of water used to make products like food, clothing, and electronics.
A cotton T-shirt can require thousands of gallons of water to produce when you include growing the cotton, processing it, dyeing it, and manufacturing it.