Water Cycle Gizmo Answer Key

Name: Gordon Stevenson Date: 03-22-2022 Student Exploration: Water Cycle Directions: Follow the instructions to go through the simulation. Respond to the questions and prompts in the orange boxes. Vocabulary: aquifer, condensation, evaporation, freezing, glacier, melting, phase change, precipitation, reservoir, runoff, transpiration, water cycle Prior Knowledge Question (Do this BEFORE using the Gizmo.) The water that comes out of your faucet at home used to be in the ocean. How did water get from the ocean to your water faucet? The water condenses in the clouds after being evaporatively by the sun. Once the water is sufficiently heavy, it precipitates and is left behind in locations like freshwater rivers. Humans utilize pipes to convey the water into your faucet and treatment facilities to make sure it is drinkable after it has been dumped. Gizmo Warm-up Water on Earth is always in motion. These motions form a repeating circuit called the water cycle. The Water Cycle Gizmo allows you to explore the different paths water takes as it moves from Earth’s surface to the atmosphere and back. 1. Click Oceans. What percentage of Earth’s water is found in the oceans? 97.25% 2. Click Atmosphere. How does the Sun cause water to move from the oceans to the atmosphere? The sun heats the water, which subsequently evaporates into the atmosphere. 3. Click Clouds. How do clouds form? As the atmosphere cools, water vapor in the saturated air condenses into the microscopic droplets that make up clouds. 4. Click Precip (rain). (“Precip” is short for precipitation, or water falling to Earth’s surface.) What causes it to rain? Eventually, the water droplets grow big enough to become raindrops and return to Earth's surface. 5. Click Oceans again, and then choose the PATH tab. Because it has the same beginning and end, the path is a complete cycle. How many steps does this cycle have? There are four or five steps. Activity: Get the Gizmo ready: The water cycle ● Select the SIMULATION tab, and click Reset. Question: What are the parts of the water cycle? 1. Collect data: Create two water cycles using the Gizmo. Each cycle should have at least four steps and should begin and end at the same location. Choose any starting point from the list on the right. When the cycle is complete, choose the PATH tab and write the steps below. Cycle 1: Lakes, vegetation, wildlife, soil, atmosphere, clouds, precip (rain), lakes. Cycle 2: Waterfall, rivers, atmosphere, clouds, precip (snow), waterfall. 2. Analyze: Use the information presented in the Gizmo to answer the following questions. A. What percentage of Earth’s water can be found in soil? 0.005% B. What percentage of Earth’s water is stored in ice and snow? 1.9% C. What percentage of Earth’s freshwater is stored in ice and snow? 68.7% D. What percentage of Earth’s water is found in lakes? 0.009% E. What is transpiration? (Hint: Click the Vegetation button.) When plants release water vapor from their leaves, this occurs F. What human activity uses the most water worldwide? Agriculture G. What human activity uses the most water in the United States? Industry H. What organisms break down chemical wastes in a treatment plant? Bacteria I. It is a salt- or porous rock-filled layer beneath the ground. What is an aquifer? J. What is a reservoir? a sizable body of water, either natural or man-made, used for domestic, commercial, and agricultural purposes. K. In what ways can runoff be a problem? It may result in severe flooding, eroding soil, and can carry contaminants into other water sources. 3. Define: A phase change is a change from one state to another, such as from a liquid to a gas. Based on what you have read in the Gizmo, fill in the blanks with the words “liquid,” “gas,” or “solid” to define each change. Evaporation: Change from a Condensation: Change from a Melting: liquid to a gas gas to a liquid Change from a solid to a liquid Freezing: Change from a liquid to a solid 4. Practice: Fill in the process that causes each transition. Your choices are evaporation, condensation, precipitation, melting, and freezing. A. Ocean 🡪 Atmosphere evaporation B. Atmosphere 🡪 Clouds condensation C. Cloud 🡪 Snow precipitation D. Glacier (river of ice) 🡪 River melting E. Cloud 🡪 Soi precipitation 5. Practice: Fill in the two processes that cause each of the following transitions. A. Ocean 🡪 Cloud evaporation , condensation B. Cloud 🡪 Glacier precipitation , freezing 6. Think and discuss: Water covers over two-thirds of Earth’s surface. Yet water shortages are a major problem for many people around the world. Why do you think this is the case? Only 2.5% of the water on earth is pure water, which we may drink. Only some of that water is safe to drink, and disruptions in the water cycle can result in events like droughts.