Our day to day life puts us face to face with many very interesting natural phenomena, but the average man doesn’t try to understand them; if asked about some of the simplest things, most people would just laugh at such silly questions. But after thinking, the smile would slowly dissapear as they would realize the question is way more interesting than it seems. For example, take a few moments and think about why clouds don’t fall.
Seems to be quite an idiot question, but actually, it’s not. For example, let’s take a look at the clouds themselves. Clouds are made from droplets of water or frozen crystals, which are heavier than air. Still, they don’t. It’s really a really simple logic process, but you have to know some things. For example, clouds are made of really small drops of water. These small drops have a harder time falling than the bigger ones because the air pushes them back, and since they have smaller mass and not that less surface area, it’s harder for them to push the air than it is for big drops.
They fall slowly, but they still fall. So there’s something else that has to be considered; that something else is wind. We think of wind that goes parallel with the earth, from one side to another. But wind can also go in the opposite way than the earth for example, in what is called an updrift. They can stop these small drops from falling down.
But going a bit further from our question, we would think that it is possible for the drops to get bigger, until the wind is not strong enough to keep them from falling. But even then, it wouldn’t be correct to say that the whole cloud falls at once, just as a big chunk of cheese would. The biggest drops fall first, than the others, until there are no big enough drops of water. We know this as rain.


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