COntents 4-5 A WET BEGINNING Comet collisions H20 Hot wet and primeval Water Life 6-7 OUT OF THE SWAMP Bubbling planet Baby fish Wet to dry The oldest living things Life elsewhere 8-9 AND ON TO THE ICE Age of ice At the poles Below freezing The big thaw Trapped in ice 10-11 A WATERY PLANET Deep oceans Wonderful water 3 disguises 12-13 FALLING RAIN Evaporation Clouds The water cycle 14-15 Rivers The river s course Lakes 16-17 RUSHING RIVERS Grinding water Waterfalls Rapids River bores 18-19 OCEANS AND SEAS Where did they come from Sea blue Ocean bed Salty sea How deep does it get 20-21 EXPLORING THE DEPTHS Diving suits Swimming underwater Out of breath Jacques Cousteau Sunken treasure 22-23 HARVESTING THE SEA Fishing Farming fish Factory ships Shellfish on ropes 24-25 THE SEA’S RICHES Sea vegetables Salt Seaweed Pearls 26-27 VALUABLE RESOURCES Deep-sea research Sea-floor mining Off-shore rigs 28-29 TOO MUCH WATER Flash floods Sea walls Houses on stilts Tsunami 30-31 DOWNPOUR Monsoon Global warming Forecasting 32-33 TOO LITTLE Drought Drinking water Wells Spreading deserts 34-35 PRECIOUS WATER Conserving water Cooking Old water Drinking plants Filling up Recycling
52-53 LIFE IN THE SEA Shoals of fish Deep sea fish Plankton Dugong Blue whale 54-55 RIVERSIDE Amphibians Birds Mammals 56-57 THE STUFF OF LEGEND Kraken Neptune Jonah Mermaids Noah Altlantis King Canute 58-59 A WORK OF ART Ship in a bottle Water music Ice sculpture Water colors The great wave Dyes Tie dye GLOSSARY and INDEX 36-37 BODY WATER Blood Waterproof skin Eyebrows Tears Sweat 38-39 WATER PLANTS Capillary action Hydroponics Floating gardens Mangrove 40-41 SPREADING IT AROUND Raising water Flooding fields Crop irrigation Drip drip drip Pipelines 42-43 CROSSING WATER Bridges Venice Aquaducts 44-45 AFLOAT Rafts Cutty Sark Water transport 46-47 SEA TRAVELLERS Astrolabe Compass Triremes Captain James Cook A huge fleet Modern explorers 48-49 WATER POWER Water into electricity Wave power Water mills 50-51 WATER FOR PLEASURE Diving Swimming Shark swimsuits Waterskiing Ice skating Windsurfing Surfboarding
4 A wet beginning Where did the very first water come from and how did it collect on Earth Earth is about 4 6 billion years old and it’s almost certain that water did not start here but arrived from outer space COmet cOllisiOns Water is thought to have been first delivered here over 4 billion years ago during a period when comets small icy bodies from the Solar System and asteroids tiny planets sometimes just a few feet across were battering the inner parts of the solar system These hurtled toward Earth at a speed of about 74,500 miles per hour making heavy pockmarks on its surface as they crashed The comets were made of interplanetary dust carbon and minerals as well as a stew of chemicals and gases In the depths of space some of these materials including the gases hydrogen and oxygen became altered and formed water Comets rained down on the young planet Earth H20 When two parts of the gas hydrogen combine with one part of oxygen H20 water is formed Luckily our Earth lies just the right distance from the Sun for liquid water to exist So over millions of years as the Earth cooled clouds of water vapor condensed or became liquid and fell to the ground as rain slowly filling the rivers seas and oceans
5 KEY WORDS comets asteroids solar system carbon minerals chemicals gas hydrogen oxygen amino acid HOt wet and primeval On this early Earth the air was thick with poisonous gases Lightning flashed in the sky as dense clouds of dust particles crashed together sending out electric charges It was hot far warmer than our weather nowadays And it rained and rained and rained almost continuously Geologists can tell all this from examining the layers of rock deep in the Earth s crust or where mountains have tilted and exposed the rocks Bubbling mud and swamps covered the land in prehistoric times Water life Water is an essential ingredient of life and our planet has lots of it Without water there would be no plants and animals certainly no people Parts of the stew that formed in the Earth s oceans usually called the primordial soup were the molecules we know as amino acids Amino acids are the building blocks of living things Scientists believe they came together in tidal pools to create larger organisms that eventually became the first plants and animals
