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Contents
2 Materials and their structure
What happens during the water cycle?
 Water moves into the atmosphere
Bookmarks Energy from the Sun heats the Earth and the temperature
of the water in the rivers, lakes and oceans increases. When
this happens, some of the liquid water forms water vapour,
which moves into the atmosphere. This is called evaporation.
 This happens because some of the particles in the liquid
water gain enough energy to break free from the forces
My Activity
holding them together and they change to a gas. Water
can also evaporate into the atmosphere from plants; this
is called transpiration.
Water in the atmosphere cools down
 As the water vapour goes up into the atmosphere, it cools
and changes back into little droplets of water in the air,
Glossary forming clouds. This process is called condensation. It
happens because the particles in the water vapour lose
energy and cannot move so quickly. Air currents high in the
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atmosphere move the clouds around the world.
Water falls from clouds
When a lot of water has condensed, the water droplets in
the clouds become too heavy for the air to hold them. The
droplets fall back to Earth as rain. If the drops become
colder they may form snow, hail or sleet. This process is
called precipitation.
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2.4 The water cycle
Water falls on the Earth
The precipitation that falls then collects
in rivers and open water such as large
lakes and the oceans.
How it is collected depends on where it
lands. Some precipitation will fall directly
onto the rivers, lakes and oceans and will
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evaporate, then the cycle starts again.
If the precipitation falls on plants it may
evaporate from the leaves back to the
atmosphere or trickle down to the ground. 
The plant roots in the ground may then
take up some of this water.
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Water in the ground
Some of the water from precipitation will soak into the soil and rocks
as groundwater. Some of this water will stay in the shallow soil layer and
will move towards streams and rivers. When groundwater soaks deeper
into the soil, it refills underground stores.
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In cold climates the precipitation may build up on land as snow, ice or
glaciers. If the temperatures rise, this solid snow and ice will melt into
liquid water, which soaks into the ground or flows into rivers or the
ocean.
Some of the precipitation will soak into the soil and move through
the ground until it reaches the rivers or the open water, large lakes
and the oceans.
Water that reaches the surface of the land may flow directly across the
ground into the rivers, lakes and oceans. This water is called surface
run-off. When there is a lot of surface run-off, soil can be carried off
the land and into the rivers. This can cause them to become silted up
and blocked.
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