how come the ground under lakes and rivers don’t drink up all the water but plain surface ground drinks up everything eventually?

Question

how come the ground under lakes and rivers don’t drink up all the water but plain surface ground drinks up everything eventually?

In: 214

Answer 1

The lake looks like a bowl, but it’s actually a bowl-shaped dent in a heavy sponge sitting in a much larger basin.

Water soaks into the ground (a heavy sponge) until it hits rock that it can’t go around (the basin). The basin keeps water in the sponge from going through the bottom of the sponge. As more water is added, the sponge (ground) fills with more water. If there’s a lower-lying area (a dent in the sponge) the water appears as a lake (puddle) surrounded by ground (sponge about puddle-level).