Water Cycle and Condensation Lab Report for Earth Science

This lab report discusses the water cycle, evaporation, precipitation, and condensation. It also includes observations from a lab experiment on condensation and water drops.

EARTH SCIENCE
[Author Name(s), First M. Last, Omit Titles and Degrees]
[Institutional Affiliation(s)]

Part 1
1. The water cycle refers to the process through which the movement of water is linked through
the environment. There are three main steps involved in the water cycle: evaporation,
precipitation and condensation. The water cycle provides a description of the way in which water
evaporate from the earth’s surface, gets up into the atmosphere where it cools and condensed into
snow or rain and then fall back on the surface of the earth in the form of precipitation (Deville
2017). The water that falls on the land gathers in the lakes and rivers, porous layers of rocks and
soil as well as some of it flowing back into the oceans where it will once again undergo
evaporation.
2. Dew point refers to the temperature at which water vapour that is in a given sample of air at a
constant barometric pressure condenses into liquid at the very rata at which it evaporates. The
pressure and the humidity affect the temperature (Yue et al., 2016).
3. The rate of evaporation would be higher on lake water since lake water can undergo
evaporation by sunlight while the groundwater on the other hand is less reachable by the sunlight
since it forms parts of the subsurface. It should be noted however that some groundwater may
undergo evaporation when transpired by plant levels yet lake water will still have higher rates of
evaporation owing to its direct impact with sunlight (Telling, Lyda, Hartzell & Glennie 2017).
4. Plants add to moisture in the air via through transpiration process during which moisture is
lifted via the plants to the small openings on the lower side of the leaves from the roots. In the
leaves it is converted to vapour which is then released to the atmosphere.
5. Heavy loss of trees which serve as the support of the soil through their roots may result into
massive erosion through the tropics. Loss of the soil may culminate into disastrous degradation

and loses of economy especially in areas that rely on agriculture. In climatic terms, upon the fall
of tropical rains on the regions of cleared forests, the run off would carry away the soil into the
rivers and local creeks (Mohanty, Cosh, Lakshmi & Montzka 2016). The rivers then carry the
eroded soils down the streams which may result into significantly great problems.
6. The main processes through which water vapour is removed from the air include precipitation,
absorption and condensation.
Part 2
Lab Part I
1. The first jar that accumulated moisture inside the jaw was the one containing hot water where
the moisture started showing as soon as the lid was placed. The room temperate jar was the
second one to get some moisture which took about 7 minutes. The cold water glass collected
moisture after 30 minutes outside the glass
2. Rain was observable in the hot water glass by the end of 32 minutes. The cold water glass
resembled rain to its outside where the water sat while the room temperature water lacked any
rain (Chahat et al., 2016). This could be explained by the fact that the room temperature water
had the same temperature as the atmosphere hence no changes in the prevailing temperature
3. The cold water resembles the North and South Pole as such regions tend to be the coldest. The
room temperature jar resembles the tropic of Cancer or Capricorn while the hot water jars the
Equatorial region which is hot (Mohanty et al., 2017).
4. As for the case of cold water condensation occurs as the perspiration could be observed onto
the outside of the glass. Evaporation never occurred as the heat to the exterior was not sufficient

enough to melt and evaporate the ice. No evaporation was noticed in the room temperature water
owing to insufficient heat to evaporate the water. Evaporation was noticed in the hot water jar
within the first few seconds of closing the jar as there was enough heat to drive the process
(Baumann et al., 2016).
Lab part II
1. Bag 3 generated the highest condensation and water drops
2. Groundwater gets discharged into the lakes and aquifers slowly in the presence of little
amount of rain in a region
3. Higher temperature would result into higher evaporation while lower temperatures
significantly lower the process
4. I did not expect the twig bag to generate a lot of water same as the water pooled at the lowest
point of the bag. The tapped bag was seemingly generating more water than was added originally
5. The initial step would be providing a water pool and then a heat source and creating
evaporation (Baumann et al., 2016). A heat point to be used for condensation to collect and start
the process of precipitation would follow. The last step would be provision of a layer of sand for
the purposes of infiltration.

References
Baumann, P., Mazzetti, P., Ungar, J., Barbera, R., Barboni, D., Beccati, A., ... & Campalani, P.
(2016). Big data analytics for earth sciences: the EarthServer approach. International
Journal of Digital Earth, 9(1), 3-29
Chahat, N., Hodges, R. E., Sauder, J., Thomson, M., Peral, E., & Rahmat-Samii, Y. (2016).
CubeSat deployable Ka-band mesh reflector antenna development for earth science
missions. IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, 64(6), 2083-2093
Deville, S. (2017). Freezing colloids: observations, principles, control, and use: applications in
materials science, life science, earth science, food science, and engineering. Springer
Mohanty, B. P., Cosh, M. H., Lakshmi, V., & Montzka, C. (2017). Soil moisture remote sensing:
State-of-the-science. Vadose Zone Journal, 16(1)
Telling, J., Lyda, A., Hartzell, P., & Glennie, C. (2017). Review of Earth science research using
terrestrial laser scanning. Earth-Science Reviews, 169, 35-68
Yue, P., Ramachandran, R., Baumann, P., Khalsa, S. J. S., Deng, M., & Jiang, L. (2016). Recent
activities in Earth data science [technical committees]. IEEE Geoscience and Remote
Sensing Magazine, 4(4), 84-89