Water cycle

Welcome! I am so excited to explore the water cycle with you today.

Before we dive in, I would love to hear a little bit about what brings you here and what you might already know about how water moves around our planet.

I'm learning for school and know a little bit already.

Your path

The Main Stages: Evaporation and Transpiration

The Main Stages: Condensation and Precipitation

Collection, Runoff, and Infiltration

Human Impact and Importance

It's awesome that you already have some background in this! Since you're studying for school, we'll make sure you master the core concepts so you can ace any questions that come your way.

What is the Hydrologic Cycle?

At its heart, the —which scientists formally call the hydrologic cycle—is the continuous, never-ending movement of water on, above, and below Earth's surface. Think of Earth as a giant, closed recycling system. The water we have today is the exact same water that has been moving around our planet for billions of years. There's no "new" water being created; it just keeps changing its physical state and location as it travels between different storing points, which are known as .

Show me a diagram of the basic cycle

I'd love to show you how this all connects visually. To help you visualize how water moves through our environment, I am kicking off a diagram that shows the entire cycle in action.

DIAG

Diagram

While that diagram is being put together, let's look at the invisible engines that keep this whole cycle spinning. There are two major forces that act as the physical drivers behind every single movement of water: and .

Multiply fractions

It looks like you want to shift gears, but let's make sure we finish our quick look at how water moves first! We were just about to preview the actual steps that the sun and gravity power before we dive deep into them.

To give you the quick roadmap, the water cycle is made up of a few key stages that keep the recycling process going:

Evaporation & Transpiration: Liquid water from oceans and plants gets warmed up by the sun and turns into an invisible gas called , which rises up into the sky.
Condensation: As that gas rises higher, it cools down and clusters together to form clouds.
Precipitation: When those clouds get too heavy, gravity pulls the water back down as rain, snow, or hail.
Collection & Runoff: Once back on the ground, gravity guides the water across the surface (as runoff) or lets it soak deep into the soil (as ), eventually delivering it back to the ocean to start all over again.

Now that we have the big picture down, we can transition to practicing some fraction math if you need a quick break, or we can zoom in on how evaporation and transpiration work!

Actually, can we review multiplying fractions first?

You got it! It's always smart to take a quick detour and brush up on math skills whenever you need them. Let's hit the pause button on the water cycle for a moment and master multiplying fractions so you feel completely ready for school.

Multiplying Fractions Made Simple

Unlike adding or subtracting fractions, you don't need to worry about finding a when you multiply. It's actually much more straightforward!

All you have to do is multiply straight across. You multiply the top numbers (the ) together, and then you multiply the bottom numbers (the ) together.

\frac{a}{b} \times \frac{c}{d} = \frac{a \times c}{b \times d}

Let's walk through a concrete example together. Imagine we want to multiply:

$\frac{2}{3} \times \frac{4}{5}$

Following our rule of multiplying straight across, we do this in two quick steps:

Multiply the numerators: $2 \times 4 = 8$
Multiply the denominators: $3 \times 5 = 15$

Putting those results back into a fraction gives us our final answer:

$\frac{8}{15}$

Since 8 and 15 don't share any common factors other than 1, this fraction is already fully simplified!