Appendix 1.3

The Water Cycle…

Intro: prompt

New bottle of water, almost as old as Earth.

The Earth only has a limited, so a set amount, of water, which goes around and around and around in what we call the ‘Water Cycle’…

Kick off: Volunteer.

What is happening to the water in the kettle?

And what happens to water when it is heating up? It evaporates.

Do cold plastic over kettle experiment and make a prediction:What will we see?

GLOVES.

The plastic is cooling the water vapour. What is gathering on the bottom of the plastic?

What process?

What happens when there is so much water that the plastic can’t hold it any more?It falls off. (Rain)

Compare to sky holding water in form of clouds.

And what happens when there is so much water in the sky that it can’t hold onto it anymore?It rains…

BBC resource…google ‘water cycle’. Talk through it.

Anyone recognise ‘convection’.

Convection involves moving huge amounts of warm air around – in this case upwards. The water vapour warms the air, helping it rise.

So, when the water heats up, it EVAPORATES, then CONVECTION moves the water vapour upwards and the air cools and we get condensation.

Then finally when the sky can’t hold the water anymore, it starts to RAIN.