Up in the Air
This primary energy source drives evaporation by warming oceans, lakes, and rivers.
What is the sun?
Any form of water—such as rain, snow, sleet, or hail—that falls from clouds to Earth.
What is precipitation?
The process where plants release water vapor into the air through tiny openings in their leaves.
What is transpiration?
Explain step-by-step how condensation forms a cloud in the sky.
Water vapor in the air cools down as it rises and turns back into liquid water droplets that group together to form clouds.
The process where water vapor cools down and turns back into liquid droplets, forming clouds.
What is condensation?
Water that flows across the ground surface into rivers, lakes, and oceans rather than soaking into the soil.
What is runoff?
In the water cycle diagram, arrows pointing upward directly from trees or plants represent this process.
What is transpiration?
Explain how evaporation works in the water cycle.
Heat causes liquid water on the Earth's surface (like oceans or lakes) to change into an invisible gas called water vapor and rise into the air.
The process where liquid water heats up and transforms into gas or water vapor.
What is evaporation?
The force that pulls precipitation down toward the ground and moves runoff downhill.
What is gravity?
Transpiration is most similar to which other water cycle process?
What is evaporation?
Why is the water cycle called a "cycle"?
It is a continuous, repeating loop where water moves between the Earth and the air with no fixed beginning or end.
True or False: Water vapor is an invisible gas.
What is True?
Water that seeps deep into the soil and rock layers underground is called this.
What is groundwater?
Water vapor released by plants during transpiration eventually rises into the air to help form these.
What are clouds?
Explain why runoff is important for filling lakes, rivers, and oceans.
Precipitation flows downhill across the land surface into bodies of water, collecting and replenishing the water supply.
When clouds become too heavy with water droplets, this stage occurs next in the cycle.
What is precipitation?
Name two different forms of solid precipitation.
What are snow, sleet, or hail?
Explain how transpiration moves water from the ground back into the air.
Plants absorb water from the soil through their roots, move it up through the plant, and release it as water vapor into the air from their leaves.
Explain the main difference between evaporation and transpiration.
Evaporation is water turning into vapor from open water or land surfaces, while transpiration is water vapor specifically released into the air by plants.