Rain descends from the cloud in the form of granules or specks. Why is the form of the water that falls not in the form of a tub waterfall?
Despite its various forms, rainwater is the most common, especially in the tropics. The process begins in the atmosphere, especially clouds as the element that has the most influence on the formation of rainwater.
Clouds themselves are formed from water that evaporates from the earth’s surface or from plants that release water and oxygen as a product of photosynthesis or sublime ice.
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At first, the water evaporated from the Earth was absorbed by the clouds. As vapor rises from the Earth’s surface into the atmosphere, water turns into a gas, and then turns into clouds as it cools and condenses.
In the atmosphere, raindrops begin to form in a spherical structure due to the surface tension of the water. This surface tension is the ‘skin’ of a body of water that keeps molecules from sticking together due to the weak hydrogen bonds between water molecules.
Quoted from SciJinks, a site managed by NASA, the thing that makes rain water fall in the form of droplets or water droplets is a tug of war between two forces; the surface tension of the water and the air pressure that pushes upward to the bottom of the droplet as it falls.
The water that evaporates in the clouds slowly becomes water droplets when the volume of liquid can no longer be accommodated in the clouds.
The shape of the drops is not as imagined
Quoted from the site gpm.nasa.gov, when a raindrop falls, it loses its round shape. The raindrops became more like the top of a hamburger bun; flat at the bottom and curved at the top dome; not at all like the classic picture of water droplets on a water bottle or in the movies.
The trigger is because the velocity of these waters as they fall through the atmosphere and the airflow at the bottom of the droplet is greater than at the top.
When a raindrop falls, it will often collide with other raindrops and increase in size. This process is known as alias melting coalescence.
Once a raindrop becomes too large, it breaks up in the atmosphere again into smaller droplets. When that happens, the surface tension disappears and the large raindrops no longer exist.
What’s the limit? The water breaks when it expands to about 4 millimeters or more.
According to institutions such as the BMKG in the US, USGS, the height of the cloud becomes a benchmark for the size of raindrops; The higher the cloud above sea level, the smaller the water droplets that fall to the surface. In addition, there is the influence of the particle size of the core.
When falling to the surface, rainwater has various sizes, ranging from 0.5 millimeters in diameter to about 4 millimeters.
Thus, the rainwater that falls from the clouds breaks down in the form of granules, unlike the rush of water that falls from a waterfall.
(can/arh)
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