Name: _____________________
Air Water & Space Lab # 2
Life of a Water Droplet Cartoon
Date: ______________________
Class # _____________________
Terms:
hydrosphere
fog
recharge
water cycle
condensation
clouds
water storage
transpiration
ground water
evaporation
precipitation
aquifer
Concepts:
1) The hydrosphere is the liquid part of earth that is near or around the surface. About
71% of the earth’s surface is covered by water. The amount of water on earth is
immense, an estimated 326 million cubic miles. A cubic mile of water equals more
than one trillion gallons. However, 99.7% of all water on earth is unusable by hum
2) Point source pollution enters the water supply from a specific location which is
known and is confined to a relatively small area. Non point source pollution enters the
water supply from a large area, and the exact source or origin of the pollution is
unknown.
3) Although the percentage of fresh water available on earth is small, the earth never
runs out because water is a renewable resource. This means its actual amount is not
limited and it can be easily replenished. This happens because water can readily
change from one state of matter (solid, liquid, gas) to another at the temperatures and
pressures that occur around Earth’s surface.
4) Water is constantly moving between each of the four spheres of Earth Science. This
unending circulation of earth’s water supply is called the water cycle or the hydrologic
cycle. It has several main steps: water storage, evaporation/transpiration,
condensation, precipitation, and recharge of water storage.
Materials Needed For Each Group:
large white paper (11 by 17)
Earth or Life science textbooks, encyclopedias
colored pencils or markers
page 123; page 527
Procedures:
Each student should make their own poster.
Use your notes to answer the conclusion questions at the end. Write your answers on
the page beside the question in this packet.
1) Look in an Earth or Life Science textbook, encyclopedia, or internet, to research the
water cycle. Look at the article on the back of this packet titled “Follow a drop
through the water cycle”. It is found on the internet at
http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/watercycle.html
2) Fold a large piece of white paper (not notebook paper) into six equal sized sections
as shown below.
You do not need to turn in your
rough draft!
3) You will draw a cartoon simulating the journey of a drop of water as it goes through
all five steps of the water cycle. Plan your cartoon before drawing it. Show the
instructor your ideas. Choose either step four or step five.
4) Make a funny cartoon showing the voyages of a droplet of water as it goes through
one complete cycle of the water cycle. Use make believe captions showing your
droplet and other characters talking along the way. Use your imagination and be
creative, but make sure that you teach real concepts and include all the steps of the
water cycle. Use one rectangle on the front for a title. You may draw two separate
cartoons that are five blocks long, or you may draw one that is 10-11 blocks long. If
you need more blocks, you may use additional paper. Use markers or colored pencils
on your poster. You may also use magazine cutouts (your own).
5) Label and underline each rectangle block with one of the five steps of the water
cycle. Make a realistic drawing of each step. Explain and label the terms and concepts
of each step. Put a title in the unused rectangle. On the back side of the poster, do the
exact same thing as before, only use different examples in your drawings. For
example, if you used evaporation on one side, use transpiration on the other. If you
showed water being stored in a lake on one side, show water being stored in the ocean
on the other. If you showed rain as precipitation on one side, show snow on the other
side and so on. Use markers or colored pencils on your poster. You may also use
magazine cutouts (your own).
6) Fold your cartoon and staple it to this packet.
Conclusion Questions:
1) Why is the water cycle so important to life on Earth?
2) How much of earth’s water is actually usable by humans?
3) In an average year in the US, what percentage of water used goes to the public supply?
4) Which kind of water pollution do you think causes the most problems for humans, point
source or non-point source? Explain.
5) What is special about the water on Earth that no other planet in the universe is able to take
advantage of?
6) Explain the difference between evaporation and condensation.
7) Explain the difference between a cloud and fog.
8) Explain what acid rain is.
Follow a Drop Through the Water Cycle
You may be familiar with how water is always cycling around, through, and above
the Earth, continually changing from liquid water to water vapor to ice. One way to
envision the water cycle is to follow a drop of water around as it moves on its way. I
could really begin this story anywhere along the cycle, but I think the ocean is the
best place to start, since that is where most of Earth's water is.
If the drop wanted to stay in the ocean then it shouldn't have been sunbathing on
the surface of the sea. The heat from the sun found the drop, warmed it, and
evaporated it into water vapor. It rose (as tiny "dropettes") into the air and
continued rising until strong winds aloft grabbed it and took it hundreds of miles
until it was over land. There, warm updrafts coming from the heated land surface
took the dropettes (now water vapor) up even higher, where the air is quite cold.
When the vapor got cold it changed back into it a liquid (the process is
condensation). If it was cold enough, it would have turned into tiny ice crystals, such
as those that make up cirrus clouds. The vapor condenses on tiny particles of dust,
smoke, and salt crystals to become part of a cloud.
After a while our drop combined with other drops to form a bigger drop and fell to the
earth as precipitation. Earth's gravity helped to pull it down to the surface. Once it starts falling there
are many places for water drops to go. Maybe it would land on a leaf in a tree, in which case it would
probably evaporate and begin its process of heading for the clouds again. If it misses a leaf there are
still plenty of places to go.
The drop could land on a patch of dry dirt in a flat field. In this case it might sink into the ground to
begin its journey down into an underground aquifer as groundwater. The drop will continue moving
(mainly downhill) as groundwater, but the journey might end up taking tens of thousands of years
until it finds its way back out of the ground. Then again, the drop could be pumped out of the ground
via a water well and be sprayed on crops (where it will either evaporate, flow along the ground into a
stream, or go back down into the ground). Or the well water containing the drop could end up in a
baby's drinking bottle or be sent to wash a car or a dog. From these places, it is back again either into
the air, down sewers into rivers and eventually into the ocean, or back into the ground.
But our drop may be a land-lover. Plenty of precipitation ends up staying on the earth's surface to
become a component of surface water. If the drop lands in an urban area it might hit your house's
roof, go down the gutter and your driveway to the curb. If a dog or squirrel doesn't lap it up it will run
down the curb into a storm sewer and end up in a small creek. It is likely the creek will flow into a
larger river and the drop will begin its journey back towards the ocean.
If no one interferes, the trip will be fast (speaking in "drop time") back to the ocean, or at least to a
lake where evaporation could again take over. But, with billions of people worldwide needing water for
most everything, there is a good chance that our drop will get picked up and used before it gets back
to the sea.
A lot of surface water is used for irrigation. Even more is used by power-production
facilities to cool their electrical equipment. From there it might go into the cooling
tower to be evaporated. Talk about a quick trip back into the atmosphere as water
vapor -- this is it. But maybe a town pumped the drop out of the river and into a
water tank. From here the drop could go on to help wash your dishes, fight a fire,
water the tomatoes, or (shudder) flush your toilet. Maybe the local steel mill will grab
the drop, or it might end up at a fancy restaurant mopping the floor. The possibilities
are endless -- but it doesn't matter to the drop, because eventually it will get back
into the environment. From there it will again continue its cycle into and then out of
the clouds, this time maybe to end up in the water glass of the President of the United States.
http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/followadrip.html