The
Water Cycle

Lets find out where the rain comes from

To find out we are going to learn about the water cycle.

When rain falls down to the ground it gathers in puddles and flows downhill.

As the water flows downhill some of it soaks into the ground where trees use it to grow. Let's follow the flow of water further down.

Trees absorb water from the ground through their roots. The water travels up the tree and evaporates through the leaves. We will learn about the evaporation process a little later on.

Flowing water eventually joins rivers and streams. These rivers and streams flow into larger bodies of water such as lakes or the ocean.

The ocean is the largest body of water on earth. The water in the ocean contains lots of dissolved salt which means it's not good for humans to drink it. The fish don't mind it though. When water evaporates the salt gets left behind with any other dissolved minerals.

When the sun shines down and warms everything up. The water starts to evaporate faster and rise up into the sky.

The process of evaporation is when liquid water turns into gas. Water is made of millions of tiny molecules of hydrogen and oxygen. Evaporation happens on the surface of the water and is when the molecules break away from each other and float into the air.

As the water vapor rises it cools down and groups together to form tiny drops of water. This is called condensation. When lots of these little droplets of water gather together they appear as mist or clouds.

The sky contains many tiny particles of water as vapor. We can only see then when they group together to form clouds or mist. The darker a cloud is the more water it is made up of. When a cloud is very dark it means there is a high chance of raining very soon.

The air in Earths atmosphere is always moving around. This movement is called wind. Wind moves the clouds to different parts of the world. The tiny droplets of water inside clouds can join together to form larger ones. When they get large enough these droplets fall to the ground as rain and start the water cycle again.