What is the water cycle?
The water cycle is the never-ending journey water takes around our planet. The same water has been moving between the oceans, the sky, and the land for billions of years — there is no “new” water being made. The Sun provides the energy that keeps the whole cycle going.
Use the interactive scene above to explore each stage. Click a glowing hotspot in the picture, tap a button in the legend, or press Play to watch the cycle step through itself. Each stage lights up its arrows and shows a short explanation.
The four main stages
- Evaporation: The Sun heats water in oceans, lakes, and rivers and turns it into an invisible gas called water vapor, which rises into the air.
- Condensation: High in the cool sky, water vapor turns back into tiny droplets. Billions of droplets gather to form clouds.
- Precipitation: When the droplets grow heavy, they fall as rain, snow, sleet, or hail.
- Collection: Fallen water gathers back in oceans, lakes, and rivers, or soaks into the ground — and the cycle begins again.
Two more pathways
The water cycle is really a web, not a single loop. Two extra pathways show why:
- Transpiration: Plants pull water up through their roots and release it as vapor from their leaves, adding even more moisture to the air alongside evaporation.
- Runoff: Rain and melting snow that don’t soak into the ground flow downhill across the land, draining off mountains and through rivers back toward the sea.
A key idea: water changes state
What makes the cycle work is that water changes between a liquid (rain, ocean water), a gas (water vapor), and a solid (snow and ice). Heat from the Sun drives those changes — adding energy turns liquid into vapor, and losing energy turns vapor back into droplets.
Using this with a class
Project the scene and press Play, pausing at each stage to ask students what happens next and why. Or name a stage and have a student find its hotspot. This interactive is free to embed on your own classroom site or blog.