Water Cycle Activity

In the N.E.W. core's science class, we learned about the water cycle. To display this cycle, our teacher made a small model to create a small water cycle.

1) Evaporation
Water that is at the surface level becomes a gas, water vapor, after being heated up by the sun. This is called evaporation. This was simulated by heating up a beaker of salt water to represent the ocean and the heat of the sun then filling a glass bottle with the water, with a smaller bottle to catch the 'rain'.


2) Condensation
Once the water molecules reach the higher levels of the atmosphere, they start to get colder. This was simulated by covering the bottle with plastic wrap (the atmosphere) and putting ice on top (the cold). The atmosphere keeps the heat in, trapping it and the water. As the water molecules begin to slow and cool down, they attach to dust particles and may become ice crystals which form clouds. This is condensation. Condensation can be seen on the sides of the bottle, where the gas starts to become liquid at the sides of the bottle.



3) Precipitation
When the water molecules are heated up more, they begin to melt. The heat makes them go from their solid ice form back to their liquid form, falling back to the ground. This is precipitation. This can be in the form of rain or snow. After water condensated on the plastic wrap, it fell back into the other bottle inside of the bottle. This helped us better see how much it precipatated in the simulated water cycle. Once water reaches the surface, it will either go into the ground, lake or ocean or become part of a run-off. Most rivers and creeks are run-offs, meaning that the ground has already soaked up as much water as it can.



Other notes:
*Sublimation: Going from solid ice to liquid gas. Usually happens in cold, dry places.
*Plants will take in water from the surface where their roots can reach it, then use it to transport nutrients up to their leaves and for photosynthesis.

Ecology Intro Activity

For N.E.W.'s science class, we will be learning the subject of ecology. Ecology is the study of ecosystems, or how living and non-living things interact in their environment. To introduce the topic, we had an activity where we had to get in groups of 11-12 people. One of the people was the leader, while all the rest had labels that had biotic and abiotic factors. A factor that is biotic is something living while a factor that is abiotic is not. Both biotic and abiotic things have to interact in an environment to create an ecosystem.

The leader had to connect all of the biotic and abiotic factors together with yarn, red yarn representing consumers (organisms that eat other organisms) and green representing producers (organisms that produce their own energy). If two organisms were connected, the one with red yarn eats the one holding onto the green end. This led to us making a food web, with water in the middle since all organisms need water. All of the organisms were connected in a variety of ways since some that ate others were eaten by something else.

Once everything was connected, we added vocabulary words from our word bank to our labels. For example, a monkey is not only a monkey but prey, a predator, consumer and a biotic factor. This activity helped us understand what ecology is by teaching us the vocabulary and basic connections between animals, plants, fungi and abiotic things in their environment.