2. Walter the Whale and Water

3. One day Walter the Whale wondered why he was able to swim, sink, or why water behaves the way it does. What Walter doesn’t realize is that this is all do to the properties of water.

4. Walter breached and the water splashed but the water came back together afterward. The first property that Walter learned is polarity. Polarity is the way water behaves as it groups together when it can. This happens because water has hydrogen, which bonds effortlessly. The oxygen side of a molecule is negative while the hydrogen side is positive. This allows the molecules to bond easily.

5. When Walter comes up for a breath, he floats on top of the water. He can do so because air has a lower density than water so when his lungs fill with air, he can float on top of the water. While Walter is surfacing, he notices that water still sticks to his skin. This is called adhesion. While the water is sticking to his skin, it is also sticking to itself. This is called cohesion.

6. Walter learned so much in his life in the water but he was curious about what he could learn about life on land. Walter tried to get into view of the shore when a wave pushed him up onto the beach. While struggling to get back in the water, Walter realized that the sand around him was wet and not dry like the sand higher up on the beach. Walter learned about capillary action. Capillary action is water’s tendency to rise in a narrow tube or seep into small openings. In this situation the opening was sand.

7. After the scary situation of being beached and being underwater for a few minutes, Walter had to come up for air. Every time this happens, Walter realizes that he overcomes the water’s surface to get to the top. Walter is overcoming surface tension. Surface tension is a property of water that makes water behave as if has a thin elastic layer on top of it.

8. While Walter was swimming around, he realized that the water he swam in was salty. This is do to the fact that water is the universal solvent. Meaning it can dissolve more solutes than any other liquid on the planet.

9. Walter swims around the world and experiences the different temperatures of the water. The earth’s climate is do to specific heat. Water high specific heat allows water to manage the climate.

10. Occasionally Walter came up for air and felt water dripping in to his blowhole. Walter was feeling rain. This is only one part of the water cycle. The water cycle is the adventure water takes in a never ending cycle. It starts with evaporation and transpiration which condensates into clouds which once they become to soaked, let their water fall to the earth or ocean.

11. 1.Roughly 70% of adults body is water. 2.At birth, water makes up 80% of a baby’s weight. 3.A healthy person can drink 3 gallons of water a day. 4.Somewhere between 70% and 75% of the earth is covered in water. 5.Much more fresh water is stored underground in aquifers than on earth’s surface.

12. http://www.allaboutwater.org/water-facts.html http://www.zoomschool.com http://www.arkive.org