
When you were in school, you probably learned about the water cycle. Your teacher probably told you that it involved three different steps: Condensation, precipitation, and evaporation. While the life-giving fluid may have taken a brief detour through your home from a water company in MD, it mostly cycled through these three steps, or so your teacher may have told you.
The water cycle is actually a lot more complicated than that, and therefore a lot more interesting. There are many different courses water can take and transformations it can go through.
Sublimation
You know that solid water, or ice, can melt into a liquid; liquid water can evaporate into a vapor; and the vapor can condense back into liquid. There is also a way that solid water can transform directly into vapor. It is called sublimation, and it only occurs with water under certain circumstances. If sunlight …