The water cycle — 5th grade science

Welcome! I'm so excited to explore the water cycle with you today. To help me tailor our session, how much do you already know about the water cycle, and is there anything specific about it that you find most interesting or confusing?

I'm brand new to this and want to start from the basics.

I'm so glad you're here to start from the absolute beginning! The best part about the water cycle is that you've already seen it in action your entire life, like when a puddle disappears after a rainy day. At its heart, the is the continuous, never-ending movement of water all around our planet—on the ground, under the dirt, and up in the sky. To understand how water makes this amazing journey, we first have to look at the three different "forms" or states that water can take: liquid water that we drink, solid ice, and an invisible gas called water vapor.

Your path

Key Processes: Evaporation and Condensation

Key Processes: Precipitation and Collection

Building a Model

Flashcard

You got it! Let's get those flashcards ready so you can practice identifying the three forms water takes during its journey.

DECK

Flashcards:Water Cycle Basics

Flash Cards

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Atmosphere

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I've started creating your flashcards! While those are being put together, we can keep moving forward.

Now that you know water can change its shape, let's look at what actually this whole cycle. It turns out that the water cycle has a boss—a massive engine in the sky that powers the entire thing. That engine is the Sun!

give me flashcard code

I completely understand wanting to see behind the scenes! However, I don't have the ability to show or write the actual software code that powers the flashcard tool itself.

What I can do is explain how we model the using a simple, hands-on scientific "model" you can make right in your kitchen! By using a few simple items, we can watch how gravity pulls water down and how the Sun's energy drives it back up, simulating Earth's global recycling system.

A sealed 2D plastic sandwich bag model illustrating the continuous water cycle.

This simple setup is called a Water Cycle in a Baggie. It is a perfect miniature replica of how our planet works. When you tape a sealed bag with a little water inside to a warm, sunny window, the heat from the sun warms the liquid at the bottom. This causes the water to rise up as invisible gas. Once it reaches the cooler air near the top of the bag, it turns back into tiny droplets of liquid water, forming miniature clouds. Eventually, those droplets get too heavy, and pulls them back down to the bottom of the bag as "rain."