Complete a children's story is about Wanda Water Molecule. As we begin, Wanda resides in the ocean. Discuss the events of her "lifetime." Why might Wanda live to be billions of years old?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

One possible story would start with Wanda bobbing in the ocean as a molecule of seawater. She circulates in the ocean for thousands of years but on one hot day she finds herself near the ocean surface. She absorbs solar radiation and gets so excited that she breaks the hydrogen bonds holding her in the liquid sate. She evaporates, or changes phase from liquid to gas, and rises buoyantly in the atmosphere.
Wanda reaches an altitude that is so cold that she goes directly from the gas to the solid state–she is deposited on a particle in the air as part of an ice crystal. Wanda and other deposited water molecules build a snowflake and fall through the cold atmosphere as snow. Wanda and friends settle on a mountaintop. More snow falls on top of them and they are crushed together in a glacier for hundreds of years. Eventually, they move with the flowing glacier to a lower elevation and melt.
Wanda feels more energetic now, and she bobbles along with other molecules of liquid water in a stream. The stream moves ever downhill until it reaches the mouth of the river. Wanda and the other molecules flow into the sea to complete the water cycle. She may repeat the water cycle over and over without being destroyed for many, many years–billions! (The amount of water in the oceans has been nearly constant since they were formed billions of years ago. It's true that a chemical reaction could tear her apart but in this story Wanda survives for eons.)