Question

Your teacher drinks a glass of water in the front of the classroom and claims, “this water could have been frozen in a glacier on Greenland thousands of years ago.” Construct an explanation to support this claim that water could have moved from a glacier on Greenland to a local Baltimore County Reservoir and into your school’s water fountain.

Your model/explanation must include the following processes:

Evaporation, Precipitation, and Condensation

Answer 1

Through the processes of melting of the glacier to form water, evaporation of water, condensation and precipitation, water in the form of melting glaciers in Greenland could have moved to the Loch Raven Reservoir and on to our school's water fountain.

Step-by-step explanation:

Considering a glacier in Greenland. When this glacier melts, its waters flows into the ocean. Subsequent heating of the ocean by sun causes the water to evaporate and rise into the sky as water vapor. This water vapor cools on rising and then condenses into water droplets in sky which forming clouds. A cloud is made of water drops or ice crystals floating in the sky.

Wind movement would then carry the clouds over great distances. These water droplets within a cloud will condense onto one another, causing the droplets to grow. When these water droplets become too heavy to remain suspended in the cloud, they will then either precipitate as rain or snow on land, rivers and oceans.

Over time, with continuous cycling and repetition of these processes, water melting from a glacier in Greenland will eventually make its way into the Big Gunpowder Falls river which feeds the Loch Raven Reservoir in Baltimore and subsequently, the water will be supplied to our school's water fountain.