What are clouds made of?

Clouds

Pluffy dark clouds and fluffy white clouds—all clouds are made of the same thing.  They are made mostly of tiny droplets of water drifting about on currents of air.  Water to make clouds comes from oceans, lakes and streams.

Everywhere water is continually evaporating into the air in the form of an invisible gas called water vapor.  Often the water vapor is carried upward by currents of warm, rising air.

As the moist air rises it cools.  As it cools, some of the water vapor condenses, or changes back to liquid water, in the form of tiny droplets, like the ones you moist breath makes when it hits the cold air on a winter day.

Many millions of these droplets, too small to fall, cluster together and make up the clouds in the sky.

Sometimes a cloud looks fluffy and white because the sun is shining through it.  Storm clouds may look dark and gray because they are too thick to let much sunlight through.

Visual source:  reefed

What is the earth’s atmosphere?

You and I live at the bottom of a great ocean of air that surrounds the earth and that extends upward for hundreds of miles.  We call it to the atmosphere.

We could not live without it and the oxygen it contains.

It keeps the earth’s temperature from becoming too hot or too cold.  It also keeps out some harmful energy from the sun.

The atmosphere is made up mostly of nitrogen and oxygen.  But theirs are arise small amounts of other gases present, too.

There is always some water vapor and dust in it, too.

The earth holds the atmosphere to it by the pull of gravity, otherwise it would drift off into space.

The atmosphere is made up of different layers.  The bottom one, the troposphere, holds most of the air living things breathe.

The higher above the earth you go, the thinner the atmosphere becomes until it gradually fades into interplanetary space.,

Visual source:  adventures

Why does a fire smoke?

Fire and Smoke

We’ve all see smoke rising from a bonfire or the chimneys of factories and houses. 

When a log in a fireplace burns, some of the burning wood is changed into invisible gases.  These hot gases, which consist mostly of water vapor and carbon dioxide.  Are very light.  They rise up the chimney and drift away with the air. 

If burning were complete we could not see the hot gases, but usually many tiny bits of ash and black specks of unburned fuel (know as soot) are also carried away in the rising clouds of gases.  The soot and ash color the gases gray or almost black and make them visible in the form of smoke.  Some soot sticks to the flue of the chimney, blackening it. 

The chimney does more than just carry off the smoke.  As the column of hot gases rises up the chimney it causes a draft that draws air into the fire.  This causes the fire to burn hotter and smoke less. 

Visual source:  asksabre

What causes rain?

You know rain falls from clouds.  Have you ever wondered how raindrops happen to be in clouds? 

Moisture is constantly evaporated from the earth’s surface by the warmth of the sun.  the invisible water vapor is carried upward by currents of warm, rising air.  As the moisture-loaded air rises it cools. 

As the air cools, the amount of moisture, it can hold decreases.  If the cooling continues long enough, some of the water vapor condenses into tiny droplets of water, which collects to form the clouds we see in the sky.

The droplets are so light that the clouds we see in the sky on currents of air. 

As the air grows colder, more and more water vapor is changed into water droplets.  The droplets grow bigger as they collect more moisture.  Then the clouds may become thick rain clouds that darken the sky. 

Finally, the water drops become so heavy that they fall as rain. – Johnny Wonder