How Do You Know That This Hand Isnt Really Touching a Cloud?
Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you'd similar an expert to answer, send it to curiouskidsus@theconversation.com.
What would information technology experience similar to touch a cloud? – Violet V., historic period 6, Somerville, Massachusetts
You might already know how it feels to touch a cloud without realizing it.
If you lot've ever been exterior on a foggy day, you've substantially been inside a cloud, just one very close to the ground instead of high in the sky. Fog and clouds are both fabricated of tiny h2o droplets – like the ones you can sometimes run into or feel in a hot, steamy shower.
Clouds form through evaporation and condensation. Water in lakes, rivers, oceans or puddles evaporates into h2o vapor every bit the sunday heats it upwardly. Yous can evaporate h2o yourself past boiling it – picket information technology disappear as vapor.
H2o vapor, which is invisible, naturally rises up from the Earth'south surface into the atmosphere every bit warm bubbling, similar the bubbles you'd see rising in a lava lamp. The higher it goes, the more it cools, until eventually the water vapor condenses back into liquid water.
Clouds are made of millions of these tiny liquid water droplets. The aerosol besprinkle the colors of the sunlight every bit, which makes clouds appear white. Even though they can look similar cushy puffballs, a cloud tin can't support your weight or concord anything upwardly but itself.
The process of evaporation and condensation in the temper is similar to what happens in your bath when you take a hot shower: Warm h2o evaporates and then condenses dorsum into h2o on the cold mirror.
Water vapor does not condense spontaneously. It needs tiny particles or a surface – like your bathroom mirror – on which to course a drop. Atmospheric scientists like me telephone call these tiny particles cloud condensation nuclei, or CCN for brusque. These CCN are just dirt or dust particles that have been lifted by the air current and are floating around in the atmosphere.
Does that mean that places with a lot of dust and pollution, similar cities, take more drops than clean places? Researchers take establish more tiny droplets and more clouds in areas where at that place are a lot of these cloud condensation nuclei, while in areas without them fewer clouds are observed, similar over the sea or the Arctic.
As cloud droplets rise in the atmosphere, the air temperature decreases. The tiny cloud droplets start to freeze when the temperature drops beneath below 32 degrees Fahrenheit (0 degrees Celsius). It'south the exact aforementioned procedure as making water ice cubes in a freezer.
The frozen droplets are at present water ice crystals. They keep to grow in size as water vapor turns into ice and sticks onto them. Scientists call this process of a gas turning into a solid "deposition." Information technology creates the beautiful branched ice crystals that you notice in snowstorms.
Steady updrafts of air keep these very light h2o droplets or water ice crystals floating in the cloud. So how do they turn into rain and snow and fall to the basis? Piece of cake, they join forces.
Larger droplets collect smaller droplets on their way to the ground equally raindrops. Snow grows in a like way, with the crystals sticking to each other. Their lilliputian arms can interlock to form a bigger snowflake. When h2o aerosol merge with ice crystals, that makes hail.
Rain droplets abound on their manner down to the ground, eventually becoming unstable and breaking up. The largest raindrop that researchers have institute was well-nigh a tertiary of an inch across. Some giant snowflakes have been reported to exist equally big as 6 inches across. And the biggest piece of hail? In 2010, someone found a hailstone 8 inches in diameter in South Dakota and took a photo – so scientists know it was real.
That would be a lot more than painful to collide with than a wispy cloud of water vapor.
Hello, curious kids! Do y'all have a question you'd like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to ship your question to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com. Please tell us your name, historic period and the city where you live.
And since curiosity has no age limit – adults, let us know what you're wondering, too. Nosotros won't exist able to answer every question, merely we will practise our best.
Source: https://theconversation.com/what-would-it-feel-like-to-touch-a-cloud-133219
Post a Comment for "How Do You Know That This Hand Isnt Really Touching a Cloud?"