Across
- 3. lots of water exist below your feet. Some precipitation and runoff soaks into the ground. Plants use this to grow. The water underground is always moving, with most of it ending up back in the oceans.
- 4. is when rain hits the land or snow melts, it flows downhill over the landscape. This provides water to rivers, lakes, and the oceans. Some even soak into the ground to become groundwater.
- 5. most of the rain that falls stays on the surface and, due to gravity, starts running downhill. This runoff water will accumulate in creeks ... I mean, in streams ...no, I mean, in this.
- 7. the sun causes liquid water to turn from a liquid to a gas (water vapor). The invisible water vapor floats high into the atmosphere (the air that surrounds the earth). Most of this happens from the oceans since oceans cover 70% of the Earth's surface. Any water can turn from a liquid to a gas, even the snow on the top of mountains or the water in the leaves of trees!
- 9. glaciers are made of this, and the water moving in them changes very slowly. The amount of this on the Earth goes up and down as the world's climate cools and warms over hundreds of years.
- 10. This is all the air from the bottom of an ant's leg up to where there is no more air - many miles in the sky. The air outside may look invisible, but it is full of molecules, including water molecules (water vapor).
- 12. is the real boss of the water cycle, and it doesn't even live here on Earth. It provides heat, or energy, making the water cycle work. Its heat allows water to change forms from liquid to gas to ice and back again.
- 13. the tiny cloud droplets combine with each other and grow into bigger water drops. They fall to Earth as rain and snow when they get heavy enough. In cold climates, this builds up as snow and ice, solid forms of water.
- 14. the colder temperatures high in the atmosphere cause the water vapor to turn back into tiny liquid water droplets—the clouds. This is the opposite of evaporation. Winds in the atmosphere blow the clouds all around the globe.
Down
- 1. when you spill your red fruit drink onto your Mom's white carpet, she rushes (after glaring at you) to get a sponge to soak up the liquid before it "seeps down into the carpet".
- 2. when a person breathes, their breath contains water molecules. All the plants around you are "breathing" and releasing water, too.
- 6. this is just a cloud that happens to be hanging around on the Earth's surface.
- 8. these are important to the water cycle because almost all the water that evaporates from liquid to water vapor (which forms clouds) comes from these.
- 11. when it snows–what happens? Yes, the rivers still rise, but it may not happen until months after it has snowed. In many places, the snow builds up all winter and does not begin to melt until spring.