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Understanding rain drops

We're going to try something different here, and go from the most simplest to the most complex explanations. Too often, things are described to us in words we don't understand, so I wanted to go with a certain approach to help readers better understand what RAIN is.

Rain.Water droplets that fall from the clouds to the Earth.

1)Clouds hold water that gathers together and then gets to heavy to remain up in the air.
-It then falls to the ground.
2)The water that falls to the Earth, gathers in places like lakes, the ocean, and other sources.
3)Heat, from the sun, dries up the water. But the water doesn't actually disappear.

-The water is turned from liquid, into small vapors that float up into clouds.
4)Those vapors gather, and then get to heavy to remain up in the air. And the cycle repeats!

But the rain drop itself, is just those collection of water vapors. Rain drops are small, ranging in sizes from a pin head to the size of a pea. And each of these sizes have different shapes.

The 'stereotypical' rain drop is depicted as a tear drop: skinny at the top and then getting bigger and rounder at the bottom. But, this is actually not true. For the natural rain drops, this is really never true except during the formation of the droplet.

Picture holding a small water balloon. Small, like the size of a tennis ball. It would remain relatively round (considering the shape of balloon you bought!). Now, imagine that you tried to hold a really BIG balloon. How would that look? Wouldn't the edges bulge and bend, and sag towards the ground, making it hard to actually hold?

The same is with water drops. Small water drops remain round (not tear drop sized). The bigger they get, the harder it is for them to hold their shape. When they do get bigger, they begin to flatten out, like a doughnut (with the middle still there). Then, even bigger, they start to look like parachutes, where the middle of the drop starts to bulge upwards, catching air as it falls.

As with our balloon analogy, our hand is actually the friction of the wind catching on the rain drop as it falls. So with a small balloon, we are able to hold the entire balloon in one hand and it keeps its size. The same thing happens with the rain drop. The wind is able to fully "cup" the rain drop as it falls, and the friction it puts on the drop is evenly placed throughout the whole of the drop. As the drop gets bigger, (as the balloon gets bigger) it is harder for the wind to maintain that even


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Understanding rain drops

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Understanding rain drops

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