Evaporation and condensation
Name and use vocabulary for the water cycle — evaporation, condensation, precipitation, collection, transpiration, water vapour, runoff, groundwater — and describe each stage of the cycle using these terms in the correct sequence
What a learner can do afterwards
- Describe the complete water cycle using at least four correct technical terms in the right order
- Distinguish 'evaporation' from 'condensation' and explain where each occurs in the water cycle
- Use 'water vapour' and 'precipitation' correctly in descriptions of weather and the water cycle
The lesson
Water never disappears. It just moves and changes form, over and over, in a big loop called the water cycle. The same water has been going around this loop for millions of years.
Evaporation happens when the sun warms water in oceans, lakes, and puddles. The warm water turns into a gas called water vapour and rises into the sky, too small to see. Condensation happens higher up, where the air is cooler. There, water vapour cools down and turns back into tiny drops of water. Billions of these drops clump together to make a cloud.
Rain fills a puddle on the playground. By afternoon, the sun has warmed it and the puddle evaporates, rising as water vapour. High in the sky, the vapour cools and condenses into a cloud. Days later, that cloud lets go of its water as precipitation, and the rain falls back down.
Not all rain runs off into rivers as runoff. Some soaks into the ground and becomes groundwater, sitting under the soil until a plant's roots or a well pulls it back up. Plants also add water vapour to the air through their leaves, a process called transpiration.
Water evaporates into vapour, condenses into clouds, falls as precipitation, then collects and starts over.
Watch it
Where it sits
Learn first
Nothing; this is a starting point.
Where this leads
Jobs that lean on this skill. Follow one to see everything it is built on.
8 questions wait behind this lesson, each with its answer explained. Every answer feeds the sky: stars light as they are learned, and dim when it is time to come back.