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The History of Drinking Water

The Egyptians were the first people to discover ways to treat water. This dates back more than 1,500 years to 400 A.D. They figured out that the best ways to clean water was by boiling it over a fire, heating it in the sun, or by dipping a heated piece of iron into it. Filtering boiling water through sand and gravel and then allowing it to cool was another treatment technique.

What is water made of?

Everything is made of atoms. An atom is the smallest particle of an element, like oxygen or hydrogen. Atoms join together to form molecules. A water molecule has three atoms: two hydrogen (H) atoms and one oxygen (O) atom. That's why water is sometimes referred to as H2O. A single drop of water contains billions of water molecules.

What is the water cycle?

Evaporation is when the sun heats up water in rivers or lakes or the ocean and turns into vapor or stream. The water vapor or stream leaves the river, lake or ocean into the air. Condensation is when water vapor in the air gets cold and changes back to liquid, making clouds.

Precipitation occurs when so much water has condensed that the air cannot hold it anymore. The clouds get heavy and water falls back to the earth in the form of rain, hail, sleet or snow.

Collection is when water falls back to earth as precipitation, it may fall back in the oceans, lakes or rivers or it may end up on land. When it ends up on land, it will either soak into the earth and become part of the “ground water” that plants and animals use to drink, or it may run over the soil and collect in the oceans, lakes or rivers where the cycle starts all over again.

Test Your WaterSense Game

Think you know everything there is to know about water? Move the water-efficiency hero Flo through water pipes and answer water-efficiency questions while avoiding water-wasting monsters. Use the information you've learned on this Web site to test your knowledge.