The Lost Lake

What Is This Video testing?

Head to the Australian Outback on a mission from Plum! Join Cooper, Clementine and Brad as they trek and tumble over rocks and dunes in search of a mysterious, missing lake. (A lake in a desert? It's not as impossible as it sounds!)

Conversation Starters

Ask:
  • Where were the Earthlings in the video? What other deserts do you know?
  • What makes a desert a desert? How is it the same or different from where we live? Very low rainfall and high rates of evaporation
  • Did the water in the lake they found really disappear? What happened to the water in it? The water didn't disappear; it evaporated.
  • What is evaporation? Evaporation is when water changes from a liquid to a gas called water vapor. This happens when molecules, or microscopic particles of water, separate from one another.
  • So where is the water that evaporated? In the air. Eventually those water molecules form larger droplets that fall to the Earth as rain or snow.

Explore Some More

Where the Water Goes

Visit a local river, lake, or stream at different times of the year, after a heavy rainfall, or when the snow starts to melt in the spring. How does it change over time? Make notes or sketches in your field notebook.