Nature Example
🌧️
The Water Cycle
Credit: Wikimedia Commons. Click here for the license
The water cycle is easy to see. It has four main parts:
1. Evaporation: The sun heats up the water in the sea (like the Atlantic Ocean) and turns it into an invisible gas called water vapour.
2. Condensation: This water vapour rises, gets cold, and turns back into tiny water droplets, forming clouds.
3. Precipitation: The droplets stick together and get heavy. They fall back to earth as rain, snow, or hail.
4. Collection: The rain lands on high ground (like mountains!) and flows downhill, forming streams and rivers. These rivers then flow all the way back to the sea, and the cycle starts again.
💡 Fun Facts
- The UK gets a lot of rain because the prevailing (most common) wind blows wet air (full of evaporated water) from the Atlantic Ocean over the land.
- Mountains and hills, like in the Lake District or Wales, force this wet air to rise quickly and cool, causing 'relief rainfall'. This is why mountains are often the source of rivers.
- The water you drink today is the same water that has been on Earth for billions of years—it's just been recycled over and over!