Edgar Murray 5th grade Water Cycle Webquest

Have you ever wondered where all the water goes when it rains? How does the rain get into the clouds? You will find out the answers to those questions as you explore The Water Cycle. Make sure you have your research worksheet out as you complete each task.

Click on the website below to see the water cycle in action.

http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/earthguide/diagrams/watercycle/

With your partner, you will explore the parts of the water cycle. On your exploration of the water cycle you will be completing a worksheet to show your knowledge. Keep track of everything you learn and interesting facts about the water cycle. You will use it to complete your final project.

At the end of your exploration your partner and you will make a Google presentation, a short children's book or comic strip, an original game or a 3D model discussing what you learned about the water cycle. You will present it to your classmates when it is complete. You will get to choose how you will re-create the water cycle, be creative! Your teacher has a rubric to follow for The Water Cycle Project.

Details about each task are explained in the process section of this WebQuest.

1.Precipitation

Your first task is precipitation. Click on the web sites below to learn more about precipitation and what it means. Make sure you take notes on your worksheet. Once you have become an expert on precipitation, proceed to your next task.

Click on R is for Rain --> Precipitation

Precipitation is water released from clouds in the form of rain, freezing rain, sleet, snow, or hail. It is the primary connection in the water cycle that provides for the delivery of atmospheric water to the Earth. Most precipitation falls as rain.

How do raindrops form?

The clouds floating overhead contain water vapor and cloud droplets, which are small drops of condensed water. These droplets are way too small to fall as precipitation, but they are large enough to form visible clouds. For precipitation to happen, first tiny water droplets must condense on even tinier dust, salt, or smoke particles, which act as a nucleus. Water droplets may grow as a result of additional condensation of water vapor when the particles collide. If enough collisions occur to produce a droplet with a fall velocity which exceeds the cloud updraft speed, then it will fall out of the cloud as precipitation. This is not a trivial task since millions of cloud droplets are required to produce a single raindrop. A more efficient mechanism (known as the Bergeron-Findeisen process) for producing a precipitation-sized drop is through a process which leads to the rapid growth of ice crystals at the expense of the water vapor present in a cloud. These crystals may fall as snow, or melt and fall as rain.

2. Collection

This next task is on collection. Make sure to take notes on your worksheet. Once you have become an expert on collection, proceed to the next task.

When water falls back to earth as precipitation, it may fall back in the oceans, lakes or rivers or it may end up on land. When it ends up on land, it will either soak into the earth and become part of the “ground water” that plants and animals use to drink, or it may run over the soil and collect in the oceans, lakes or rivers.

Sometimes it will fall in very cold areas of the world as snow. This snow can stay frozen for a long time until the sun melts it and it runs down into the rivers and on to the sea. Nearly half of all precipitation flows back across the land to seas and oceans. The water has now arrived back where it started and the whole process starts again.

The world's total water supply has a volume of about 13,700 million cubic kilometers. However most of this is salt water (97%) in the oceans and the remaining 3% is fresh water

3. Evaporation

In this next task you will explore evaporation. Click on the websites below to learn more about evaporation and its role in the Water cycle. Take notes on your worksheet. Once you have become an expert on evaporation, proceed to your next task.

Evaporation 

The process of water molecules escaping the surface of the Earth and entering the atmosphere is known as evaporation. Evaporation takes place as molecules of water escape from a collective body of water. This can be a puddle, a lake, a stream, or just a droplet of water.

View the page --> Evaporation

4. Condensation

This final task is on condensation. Click on the websites below to learn more about condensation and its role in the Water Cycle. Take notes on your worksheet. Once you have become an expert on condensation, proceed to your final project.

Condensation 

Condensation is the opposite of evaporation. It takes place when water vapor in the air condenses from a gas, back into a liquid form, and leaves the atmosphere, returning to the surface of the Earth.

To make sure you understand the process of the water cycle, work on this website. Copy and paste below html to web address bar and then check your answers.

http://education.jlab.org/reading/water_cycle.html

For your final project, your partner and you will work together to create a model of the Water Cycle. Be creative with this project! You can make a Google Presentation, write a story, create a diagram, a 3D model, the choice is yours. You must identify and describe all of the steps of the water cycle, including: evaporation, transpiration, condensation, precipitation, and collection. Use your notes taken during “The Process” and the rubric to help you with your creation.

Earthguide.diagrams

Science Education - Jefferson Lab

Teachers,

The Science Leaders will bring around the The Water Cycle Research Papers and the Rubic Papers for the webquest.  They will also be bringing the water cycle materials for you to set up for the class to observe.  I will send that information out to you separately. If any students choose to do the 3D model, I have some material and paints in my room.