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Changing States of Matter

Changes In States of Matter is a fun game where the young kids can see how different substances change when they are heated or cooled. It is going to be an exciting game for kids. Play this game to explore and learn how changes in different states of matter occur.

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Changes in States of Matter | Turtle Diary

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Login to rate activities and track progress. Login to rate activities and track progress. Most browsers are no longer supporting Flash games. We are working on making Flash playable in your browser or we will replace this game with a version that does not need Flash. Our team is actively working on it.

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BBC Interactive for ES

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BBC - KS2 Bitesize Science - Changing state : Play

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Science materials exercise - Changing state activity

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There's so much to learn about water. Read this page to learn about fun and interesting ways to learn more about water.

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Online Game

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Changing State of Water

Learn about the changing states of water as you experiment with different temperatures in this fun, interactive activity. What happens when water reaches 100 degrees? Does water or ice take up a larger volume? Give it a go and find out! Play around with ice, water and steam to find out what happens when you heat and cool them. Watch what happens if you try heating the steam to high temperatures, try turning water to gas and back to a liquid again and enjoy all the other challenges in this cool science game for kids.

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Changing State of Water - Ice, Water, Steam - Science Games & Activities for Kids

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Changing State of Water Learn about the changing states of water as you experiment with different temperatures in this fun, interactive activity. What happens when water reaches 100 degrees? Does water or ice take up a larger volume? Give it a go and find out!

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The journey of a Water Molecule

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Resources for Primary and Secondary Students - ABC Education

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4000+ educational games, videos and teaching resources for schools and students. Free Primary and Secondary resources covering history, science, English, maths and more

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Find out about each stage of the water cycle, evaporation, condensation, precipitation and collection in this Bitesize KS2 Science guide.

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Rain - Filtration - Transpiration

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The water cycle is Earth's natural mechanism for transporting and recycling water between the surface and the atmosphere. Through the processes of condensation, precipitation, infiltration, runoff, transpiration, and evaporation, water continuously travels from the atmosphere to the ground and back again. In this animation from NASA, observe the steps of the water cycle.

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The Water Cycle Game

Watch your own eco-system go through the water cycle. This Turtle Diary science game will teach kids about precipitation, conensation, and more!

How to play The Water Cycle

First Learn the whole water cycle of climate and give answers.

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Water Cycle | Water Cycle Games for 2nd Grade | Turtle Diary

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Watch your own eco-system go through the water cycle. This Turtle Diary science game will teach kids about precipitation, conensation, and more!

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Ecosystems: The Water Cycle: StudyJams! Science | Scholastic.com

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How does water get back up into the sky? This activity will teach students about the water cycle and how it works.

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The Water Cycle - Animation | Precipitation Education

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This animation shows the entire process of the water cycle throughout the course of a day.This website, presented by NASA's Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission, provides students and educators with resources to learn about Earth's water cycle, weather and climate, and the technology and societal applications of studying them.

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Brainpop - Game Up - Need login

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In this free science game, students use photosynthesis, rain, and groundwater to control Earth's water cycle and beat a tricky competitor!

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Multi Level

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Back to the water cycle on the USGS Water Science School.

Atmosphere

The atmosphere truly is the superhighway in the sky that moves water everywhere over the Earth.

The next time you go outside you will be standing in the Earth's atmosphere. The atmosphere 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, as water vapor. That big cumulus cloud (full of water) floating in the sky is the water cycle in action.

The water vapor all around you rises up into the sky to become part of a cloud which will float off with the winds, probably looking for a picnic to rain on. A cloud in the atmosphere can move for hundreds of miles before it releases its water as rain or snow. That is how water that evaporates from the ocean one day may end up as rainfall over Ezmerelda's tomato patch in Kansas the next day.

How much does a cloud weigh?

Clouds are made of water, and water has weight, so how can they float? They float because the air below them has weight, too-more weight. Think about oil and water-if you pour oil into water the oil floats to the top of the water. That is because oil is lighter (less dense) than water; the same thing applies to clouds in the sky.

What fools you is that the water vapor in the air in a clear, blue sky is invisible, and there is not enough water vapor to condense into clouds. Water vapor contains water molecules-one oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms. You know hydrogen is the lightest of all elements, and, even when combined with an oxygen atom, the hydrogen acts like little "hot air balloons" that makes the vapor lighter than the molecules in the surrounding dry air. Water vapor naturally floats upwards, eventually condensing and forming clouds.

And, a cloud weighs ... According to NOAA, your average cumulus cloud one kilometer (0.62 miles) on a side will weigh about 998 million kilograms (2.2 billion pounds). That is equal to about 22 million (22,000,000) kids weighing 100 pounds each.

Learn more: Atmosphere | Condensation | "Little cloud that could" | Rainbows
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Fog and dew

Fog contains very tiny liquid water particles, like a cloud, and floats, like a cloud. Actually, fog IS a cloud, but one that swirls around your feet instead of high in the sky.

Fog forms when air containing invisible water vapor encounters cooler temperatures (next to the ground) and some of the water vapor condenses out into liquid water droplets. In this picture, as the day warms the air next to the ground will warm, too, and the fog particles will again evaporate back into invisible water vapor.

In the case of dew, water vapor in the air encounters a substance that has become cooler, such as the grass at night or even your glass of iced tea. The cooler temperatures causes the water vapor in the air to condense into liquid water-dew.

Fog and dew can join forces to become an intricate part on the water cycle in certain locations. On the island of Maui in the Hawaiian Islands, fog condenses into dew and drips onto the ground, contributing a significant amount of water to the forests during the non-rainy months.

Groundwater flow

If you pour a glass of water onto the ground it usually sinks right in ( infiltration), so you can imagine how much water sinks into the ground during a major storm ( Find out here). Here in Atlanta, Ga, USA it rains about 50 inches/year. Over a 100 square mile (10 miles by 10 miles) area, that means 87,000 billion gallons of water falls, with much of it soaking into the ground to become groundwater.

Yes, water below your feet is moving all the time, but, no, if you have heard there are rivers flowing below ground, that is not true. Water underground moves, due to gravity, downward and sideways. Groundwater serves many purposes in nature: keeping plants alive, filling aquifers, from which people can withdraw water, providing water to rivers and lakes, and eventually flowing into the oceans.

You may know that water's chemical composition is H ₂ O. A water molecule contains 2 hydrogen (H) atoms and 1 oxygen (O) atom.

One molecule of water in your glass won't quench your thirst, though. You need LOTS of water molecules, trillions of them. At normal temperatures all those individual water molecules like to stick together and form a liquid (the water in your glass).

Because of the way that the hydrogen and oxygen atoms exist in a water molecule, one water molecule is attracted to another water molecule. The opposite sides of a water molecule stick to each other just as opposite sides (poles) of magnets do.

Like a magnet, one side of the water molecule (the side with the oxygen atom) has a negative electrical charge while the other side, where the hydrogen atoms sit, has a positive charge. Since opposite charges attract each other, water molecules attract each other. So much so that when trillions of them get together, they often start sticking to each other and, thus, you have liquid water.

Ice and snow

Ice and glaciers are part of the water cycle, even though the water in them moves very slowly. The amount of ice on the Earth goes up and down as the world's climate cools and warms over thousands of years.

Lucky for us we're now in a warmer phase of the Earth's history, but the last Ice Age was only 18,000 years ago. At that time, ice covered the northern part of North America.

So much liquid water was locked up in ice back then that the oceans were about 400 feet (122 meters) lower than they are today. If all land ice melted today the seas would rise about 230 feet (70 meters).

Ice and glaciers are still very prevalent today, as you can see by looking at a satellite image of Greenland (now, why is it called "Green"land?). Glacial ice covers 10-11 percent of all land. In fact, most of the world's freshwater, about 68 percent, is locked up in ice, snow, and glaciers.

Ice caps influence the weather, too. The color white reflects sunlight (heat) more than darker colors, and as ice is so white, sunlight is reflected back out to the sky, which helps to create weather patterns.

Sublimation

When rain falls where you live, much of it disappears from evaporation, right? But what about at the top of Mt. Everest? The elevation is over 29,000 feet and temperatures at the peak are never above freezing, so it never rains there. It does snow a lot. We all know that snow melts, but if it never rises above freezing, how does snow not build up forever on Mt. Everest?

As this picture shows, winds, often at hurricane force, blow tons of snow off the peak. But a part of the water cycle called "sublimation" is also at work. Just as evaporation turns liquid water into water vapor gas, sublimation turns frozen water directly into water vapor gas, skipping the melting phase into a liquid.

Also, as with evaporation, the sun's heat causes sublimation to work, and on top of Mt. Everest on a clear day, the sun is very strong and provides energy for sublimation, even though it is below freezing.

Sublimation doesn't just occur on mountain peaks. If there is snow and ice buildup in your neighborhood then on a sunny and dry day sublimation is happening there, too.

Sunbathing - evaporation

If this drip sitting on a desert island is hoping to get a tan, she'd better hurry because the water cycle is not going to let her hang around here very long. A water drop laying in the sun on a hot day is just asking to be evaporated by the sun.

As soon as she sat down in her chair, the sun's heat began to evaporate her into water vapor gas, and so she will float off as millions of vapor particles up into the sky. The drip won't be upset, though, as her water vapor will eventually recombine to form clouds and then rain which will runoff the land into rivers which flow into the oceans, again. She can be back sunbathing by the next day.

Volcanic steam

Volcanoes cannot exactly get angry, but as this picture of Mt. St. Helens, USA in 2005 shows, they really do "blow off steam". It may not be a big component of the world's water cycle, but volcanoes and geysers do release steam into the air, steam which rises and becomes clouds.

What is interesting about the steam coming from a volcano is that the components of water are coming out from deep inside the earth, which is on the far edges of the water cycle. At a certain depth below the land surface you won't find liquid water, due to the tremendous temperatures and pressures. But the molten rock and material making up magma deep in the earth contains chemicals that later do form water molecules.

The World's Water

Where is Earth's Water?

In the first bar, notice how only 2.5% of all Earth's water is freshwater, which is what life needs to survive. Over 96% of all water is found in the oceans.

The middle bar shows the breakdown on that 2.5% which is freshwater. Almost all of it is locked up in ice and in the ground. Only 1.3% of all freshwater (which was only 2.5% of all water) is surface water, such as lakes and rivers, which serves most of life's needs.

The right side bar shows the breakdown of only the surface freshwater, which was only 1.3% of all freshwater. Most of surface freshwater is locked up in ice, and another 20% is in lakes. Notice the 0.46% of surface freshwater that is in rivers. Sounds like a tiny amount, but rivers are where humans get a large portion of their water from.

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Interactive Water Cycle Diagram for Kids (Advanced)

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The Water Cycle for Kids, from the USGS Water Science School.

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Including Changes & states

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This lesson explores the processes in the water cycle.