Water Cycle Explanation Writing

The Water Cycle

I am learning to inform my audience through an explanation

By Liam

What has been around since the start of earth and all life needs it to survive? It’s water, but did you know water goes through a complex cycle called the water cycle. A cycle is a series of steps that repeat over and over again. The scientific name for the Water Cycle is the Hydrologic Cycle. Water is super important because all life needs water to survive. The water on the earth covers three quarters of the earth. 97 percent of the water on earth is salt water and the remaining three percent is freshwater but you can only drink one percent of that. There are three main stages in the water cycle and without each part the water cycle wouldn't exist. The stages are evaporation, condensation and precipitation. The first stage is evaporation.

Evaporation is when the sun’s rays heats up water on the ground or in lakes, rivers, streams, the ocean and even plants! After the water heats up enough it turns to a gas called water vapour and rises high up in the air. Did you know water vapour is invisible! If salt water evaporates the salt gets left behind. This is good because it makes the water potable. Potable means drinkable. Once the water reaches a certain height it cools down and starts to condensate.

The second stage is condensation. You can see condensation if you breathe onto a window on a cold day. When water vapour gets cold enough it turns back into water droplets and comes together to create a cloud. Did you know the average cloud weighs around 500,000 kgs or 100 elephants, and a cloud can contain billions of kgs of water! There are 8 common types of clouds and three of them are stratus, cumulus and cirrus. Eventually the cloud will fill up with lots of water and start to rain.

The final stage is precipitation. Precipitation is when water falls from clouds. The water has four forms it can fall in. They are rain, snow, sleet and hail. The most dangerous form of precipitation is hail. Hail is super dangerous because it is a frozen ball of ice and it can fall around 50 kilometres an hour. In America hail can be the size of a baseball! Most of the precipitation that falls lands back in the ocean. If it lands on the ground it is most likely to evaporate really fast. If rain falls onto concrete it will either collect in a puddle or run off the concrete because the rain can’t soak into the concrete. After the rain collects the evaporation stage happens again completing the water cycle.

In conclusion the water cycle is very important and all life needs it to survive. Evaporation, when liquid turns to gas, condensation, when gas turns back into droplets and precipitation, when the droplets fall down. Now you know that water is really important and you should do your part by saving water.