Watching how the raindrops slide down your window pane can become an interesting pasttime. The next time it rains see for yourself how fast or how slow they gravitate downward and how a larger one, overtaking a smaller one, gobbles it up as it proceeds onward. They do seem to have an affinity for each other; and why shouldn't they, they share the same kind of molecules. While you watch your window pain will become a visual art form. The most interesting time to rain drop watch is when the rain stops splattering and the trickle ceases to flow and several lone drops make the downward journey. The gravity pull is down due to their weight. Also, since they are of the same molecules when one gets near another they merge.

How do rain drops form? To get that answer I checked out the "Proceedings", a national Academy of Sciences published study done by Mikael Oliveberg and Linda Hedberg at Umea University. They say the whole procedure is a little more complicated than having a few water molecules congregate and forming themselves into the teardrop shape. Before this can happen, a whole bunch of molecules, at least a hundred or more is needed. These researchers believe they form pretty much in the same way that human cells are built. At least in their shape.

Precision is needed to make sure a raindrop is formed. All of the molecules must act as one when joining together. These researchers believe there is a similarity between how protein cells are built - the so-called building blocks of the body - and the way tear drops are formed. It is the way proteins form that clue them in on how the raindrops get their shape; both need to instantaneously fold to a globular form.

This interesting side role that rain drops play in their medical research was not sought but was an incidental occurrence that answers many questions for them. It puts them steps ahead when looking for ways to better understand how cells go wrong when first formed and how these relate to various inherited disease processes. How then do raindrops get their globular shape? Do they assume this shape when they fall? No, not so say the experts. When they fall they flatten out. When we see them on the window pane, as an example, it is gravity that gives them that shape.

Shapes vary according to their size, say Kenneth V. Beard, an Illinois meteorologist working with the Illinois State Water Survey and a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbina-Champaign. Drizzling rain has a different

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