Solar Energy & Heat
What type of energy transfer allows the Sun to heat Earth without direct contact?
What is radiation?
Which force causes precipitation to fall to Earth?
What is gravity?
What is the process of water changing from a liquid to a gas?
What is evaporation?
Water that seeps into the ground is called what?
What is infiltration?
True or False: Freezing is an endothermic process.
What is false?
Which process in the water cycle is directly powered by solar energy?
What is evaporation?
What force causes water to flow downhill during runoff?
What is gravity?
What is the name of the process when water vapor cools and forms droplets?
What is condensation?
What is it called when plants release water vapor?
What is transpiration?
Which process connects plant biology and the water cycle?
What is transpiration?
What type of heat transfer occurs when warm water circulates in a lake?
What is convection?
How does gravity affect infiltration?
It pulls water into the ground.
Which phase change releases heat into the environment?
What is condensation or freezing?
Which process involves water flowing over land?
What is runoff?
How might deforestation affect the local water cycle?
Reduced transpiration and precipitation.
How does solar energy affect the rate of transpiration in plants?
What is increases the rate?
Describe how gravity impacts at least two water cycle processes.
(Teacher discretion: Accepts runoff and precipitation, for example.)
Which two phase changes require energy input?
What are melting and evaporation?
Explain the sequence of events from evaporation to precipitation.
Water evaporates, condenses into clouds, then precipitates.
Predict how a drought affects infiltration and groundwater.
Infiltration decreases, less recharge.
Compare conduction, convection, and radiation in the context of the water cycle.
What is (teachers discression)?
Predict what might happen to runoff patterns in a flat vs. hilly area.
More runoff in hilly areas; more infiltration in flat areas.
A mountaintop glacier is slowly melting due to rising temperatures. Trace the journey of a single water molecule starting from solid ice, through at least three phase changes, until it returns to the glacier. Name each phase change and describe the energy involved.
What is melting, evaporation, condensation and freezing?
Describe how the water cycle helps regulate Earth's temperature.
Through heat exchange during phase changes and circulation.
Describe how solar energy, gravity, and water cycle processes contribute to a thunderstorm.
(Teacher's Discretion)