Just like being stuck with your pest of a brother or sister, you can’t get away from water. But you should be glad you can’t. On both accounts.
You see water in a lake, or a stream, or river — you get the idea. Humans, animals and plants drink the water up.
What we don’t drink evaporates. Or it freezes. Some of it melts. It goes up to the clouds that hold water until they release the water and then water has returned. You might think to yourself, “Not as good as grape juice” … until you’re really thirsty and there’s a fresh glass of water nearby. That stuff sitting in the glass? It’s always leaving and coming back. You might not think about it that way.
Science with Me explains,
Water can change state from liquid to vapour to ice at different places on the water cycle. However, the balance (or amount) of water always stays the same. So the water in your glass is very, very, very old indeed! (but it still tastes good). If you think of a person who lived hundreds of years ago, well the water in your glass was on the Earth then too! Maybe they even drank the same water as you…ewwwww!!
Sure, it might take a long time for the water in Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg to evaporate, transpirate, condensate, precipitate, hesitate, stare at Nate.
And sure, it might be a long time before your brother, bothering you with his pile of legos, can build a robot that will pour something into a glass for you. It might be some time later when your sister, buzzing all the time at the game of Operation, can safely perform the Heimlich maneuver on you because you drank too fast and started choking. Then it’s a good thing they didn’t go away. Maybe it would help to consider your brother or sister as a slow moving iceberg, a frozen body of water. That’s not my sister. That’s just vapor.
