Middle School
The Water Cycle
The Sun lifts water into the sky and gravity brings it back down. Watch clouds form, see why one side of a mountain is a desert, and follow rain underground.
💡 Big truth: clouds are NOT gas! They are billions of tiny drops of liquid water.
Driven by two forces: sunlight & gravity
Sunlight heats the ocean so water evaporates and rises as invisible vapor. High up it cools and condenses into clouds, which are tiny liquid droplets. When the droplets get heavy, gravity pulls them down as rain, and gravity pulls the runoff downhill back to the ocean.
Sunlight
85% (Hot Day)
Evaporation
Fast
Water in Cloud
40%
Rain
Building Up