Clouds are also heavy

Watching the clouds and clouds in the sky, white clouds float in the sky, often give people a sense of light fluttering. But do you know? The cloud is actually heavy, and its weight cannot be underestimated.

The cloud is a huge combination of water droplets and ice crystals suspended in the air. Its formation starts with the rise of the hot and wet air. When the hot air cools down, it cannot withstand the weight of the water vapor. Some water vapor gather around dust particles to form tiny water droplets. These tiny water droplets form clouds. When the hot air is forced to rise, or blows over the water and other colder surfaces, it can form a cloud. In summer, the hot and humid air flow rose and cooled quickly, forming a storm. The cloud looks white, because the water droplets reflect light. When the condensed water droplets make the clouds wet and heavy, it will show a bleak color, because light cannot pass through.

Taking the more common clouds in life as an example, meteorologists pointed out that the density of the accumulated cloud type is about half a cubic meter. For a one -kilometer -long medium -sized accumulation cluster, because we think it has a cube shape, it will be one kilometer high. In this example, the volume of cloud clusters is about 1 billion cubic meters. With density and volume, we can calculate the weight and quantity of water that accommodate clouds. Calculated, when we looked up to see a white cotton -shaped accumulated cloud, we had about 500 tons of water hanging on our heads.

If this white stagnant cloud becomes thicker and thicker because of a certain weather conditions, it becomes a storm cloud, then the calculated answer will be more scary, and its quality is about 200,000 elephants. This accumulated cloud is also called Jiyun Cloud. It is the "big block" in the cloud family. When it is mature, it can reach about 12 kilometers.

So the question is, why don't such a heavy cloud float in the sky? The cloud was held up by a strong uplifting airflow, and the small droplets of the cloud formed very small, so the terminal speed was very small. Even fine airflow disturbances can hold these liquid droplets and return to the original height. To describe it with a simple metaphorical sentence, the clouds are like huge ice cream, located on an egg tube that we can't see the air that we can't see. Therefore, even if the cloud will continue to decline, it is only a few centimeters per second, so it looks like being "nailed" in the sky.

In summary, the seemingly fluttering clouds also have amazing weight. However, due to the lifting effect of the rising airflow and the slow speed of the cloud, our naked eye can only see the discrete of floating clouds, and we cannot see that it has fell rapidly under the effect of gravity because of its heavy characteristics. Looking up at the sky in the future, when you see the clouds, you must never think that it is fluttering!

Author: Yao Wang

Source: Shaanxi Science and Technology News

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