The Water Cycle
What provides the energy that powers the water cycle?
What is the Sun
The percentage of Earth’s water that is freshwater.
What is about 3%?
The percentage of Earth’s water found in oceans as saltwater.
What is about 97%?
Water that is not salty and can be used for drinking, farming, and cleaning.
What is freshwater?
The two main forces that drive all water movement on earth.
What are the sun and gravity?
Name the four main parts of the water cycle.
What are Evaporation, Condensation, Precipitation, and Collection/runoff
The places where most of Earth’s freshwater is stored—frozen or underground.
What are glaciers, ice caps, and aquifers?
The term for all of Earth’s water—fresh and salt combined.
What is the hydrosphere?
How much salt is dissolved in water.
What is salinity?
The way the ocean connects to all of Earth’s water.
During condensation, water vapor cools and changes into what?
What are liquid droplets that form clouds
An underground layer of rock or sand that holds water.
What is an aquifer?
The force that causes tides.
What is the pull of gravity from the Moon?
The process of removing salt from ocean water to make it drinkable.
What is desalination?
The reason oceans help regulate climate.
What is because they store and move heat around the planet?
Why is the water cycle called “continuous”?
What is it never stops- water is always moving and changing forms
The reason freshwater is unevenly distributed around the world.
What is because some areas get a lot of rain and others get very little?
Streams of moving water in the ocean’s top layer, caused by wind and Earth’s rotation.
What are surface currents?
A place where water is collected and stored, either natural or man-made.
What is a reservoir?
What happens to water after precipitation.
What is collection in lakes, rivers, or oceans before evaporating again?
How do the Sun and oceans work together in the water cycle?
What is the sun heats ocean water causing evaporation that starts the water cycle
The way wetlands help the environment.
What is cleaning polluted water and providing habitats for plants and animals?
Slow-moving flows of water deep below the surface, caused by temperature and salinity differences.
What are deep currents?
A large stream of moving ocean water, either at the surface or deep below.
What is a current?
The reason protecting freshwater and oceans is important.
What is because they’re part of one system that supports all life on Earth?