Rain's Dirty Little Secret
Somewhere inside of every raindrop is a tiny impurity – a touch of salt, a speck of soot, a grain of clay – that’s absolutely crucial to the raindrop’s existence.
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Show Notes
To learn more about this topic, start your googling with these keywords:
- Condensation: the process of water molecules glomming together into visible droplets
- Condensation nuclei: tiny solid particles that water vapor condenses onto (also called aerosols)
- Homogeneous condensation: condensation without any kind of condensation nuclei
- Dew point: the temperature below which water vapor starts to condense into droplets
- Heterogeneous condensation: condensation that happens with the help of condensation nuclei
- Critical Embryo: a cluster of water molecules big enough to easily gain more molecules
- Cloud chamber: a cool thing to check out if you want to build a particle detector at home (it involves pumping a bunch of water vapor into pure air; when a particle passes through, it leaves a streak of ionized water molecules that, in super-saturated air, can act as condensation nuclei!)
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