Muffin the Secret Agent

Hi! My name is Muffin and I’m a secret agent. Look! Here comes a new mission now. It says to teach you about the water cycle! HQ sent me these special glasses that show us water molecules.

I’m wearing a jacket because it’s cold up here in the mountains. Let’s look at this glacier with my special glasses. Woah! The water molecules are frozen into a solid!

Look! Lower down on the mountain, ice from the glacier is melting into liquid. The molecules are farther apart because they’re not solid anymore, but they’re still close because the water is cold. Gravity pulls the water down towards the hills. The water dripping down the hill is called runoff.

The runoff soaks into the ground. Let’s take a look! Water in the ground is called groundwater. But where does the water go?

Some of the water gets sucked up by plants, and some of it comes to the surface and forms rivers, lakes, and ponds. These molecules go to a river.

The river flows into a lake, where it stays for a while. Then, energy from the sun heats the water and carries the tiny molecules up into the air. This is called evaporation.

The water molecules in the air start to get colder and clump together, making a cloud. This is called condensation. More and more molecules decide to join the cloud until it’s full.

When a cloud is full, it needs to lose some water so it can hold other water molecules. A cloud losing some of its water is called precipitation. Precipitation can come in snow, rain, hail, sleet, or even fog!

Now we’re back at the glacier where we started. Look at that! It’s snowing! Do you remember what snow is called? That’s right, precipitation! Well, bye for now! I’ll see you on another adventure soon.