Science Zone

Top 10 Scientific Laws and Theories that you Should Really Know.

10. Big Bang Theory If you're going to know one
scientific
theory, make it the one that explains
how the universe arrived at its present
state. Based on research performed by
Edwin Hubble, Georges Lemaitre and
Albert Einstein, among others, the big bang theory
postulates that the
universe began almost 14 billion years
ago with a massive expansion event.
At the time, the universe was confined
to a single point, encompassing all of
the universe's matter. That original movement
continues today, as the
universe keeps expanding outward.
The theory of the big bang gained
widespread support in the scientific
community after Arno Penzias and
Robert Wilson discovered cosmic microwave
background radiation in
1965. Using radio telescopes, the two
astronomers detected cosmic noise, or
static, that didn't dissipate over time.
Collaborating with Princeton
researcher Robert Dicke, the pair confirmed
Dicke's hypothesis that the
original big bang left behind low-level
radiation detectable throughout the
universe. 
 
9.Hubble's Law of Cosmic Expansion: 
 Let's stick with Edwin Hubble for a
second. While the 1920s roared past
and the Great Depression limped by,
Hubble was performing
groundbreaking astronomical
research. Hubble not only proved that there were
other galaxies besides the
Milky Way, he also discovered that
these galaxies were zipping away
from our own, a motion he called
recession.
In order to quantify the velocity of this galactic
movement, Hubble proposed
Hubble's Law of Cosmic Expansion,
aka Hubble's law, an equation that
states: velocity = H0 × distance.
Velocity represents the galaxy's
recessional velocity; H0 is the Hubble constant,
or parameter that indicates
the rate at which the universe is
expanding; and distance is the
galaxy's distance from the one with
which it's being compare. 
 
8.Kepler's Laws of
Planetary Motion: 
Kepler's three laws of planetary
motion -- formed in the early 17th
century -- describe how planets orbit
the sun. The first law, sometimes called
the law of orbits, states that planets
orbit the sun elliptically. The second law, the law
of areas, states that a line
connecting a planet to the sun covers
an equal area over equal periods of
time. In other words, if you're
measuring the area created by
drawing a line from the Earth to the sun and
tracking the Earth's
movement over 30 days, the area will
be the same no matter where the Earth
is in its orbit when measurements
begin. 
 
7.Universal Law of Gravitation: 
 We may
take it for granted now, but
more than 300 years ago Sir Isaac
Newton proposed a revolutionary
idea: that any two objects, no matter
their mass, exert gravitational force
toward one another. This law is represented by
an equation that many
high schoolers encounter in physics
class. It goes as follows: F = G × [(m1m2)/r²]
F is the gravitational force between the
two objects, measured in Newtons. M1
and m2 are the masses of the two
objects, while r is the distance
between them. G is the gravitational constant, a
number currently
calculated to be 6.672 × 10-11 N m²
kg-2 The benefit of the universal law ofgravitation is
that it allows us to
calculate the gravitational pull
between any two objects. This ability is
especially useful when scientists are,
say, planning to put a satellite in orbit or charting
the course of the moon. 
 
6.Newton's Laws of
Motion: 
 The first of the three laws states an
object in motion stays in motion unless
acted upon by an outside force. For a
ball rolling across the floor, that
outside force could be the friction
between the ball and the floor, or it could be the
toddler that kicks the ball
in another direction. The second law establishes a
connection between an object's mass
(m) and its acceleration (a), in the form
of the equation F = m × a. F represents
force, measured in Newtons. It's also a
vector, meaning it has a directional component.
Owing to its acceleration,
that ball rolling across the floor has a
particular vector, a direction in which
it's traveling, and it's accounted for in
calculating its force.
The third law is rather pithy and should be
familiar to you: For every
action there is an equal and opposite
reaction. That is, for every force
applied to an object or surface, that
object pushes back with equal force. 
 
5 .Laws of
Thermodynamics The British physicist and
novelist C.P.
Snow once said that a non scientist
who didn't know the second law of
thermodynamics was like a scientist
who had never read Shakespeare].His now's now- famous
statement was meant to
emphasize both the importance of
thermodynamics and the necessity for
non scientists to learn about it.
Thermodynamics is the study of how
energy works in a system, whether it's an engine
or the Earth's core. It can be
reduced to several basic laws, which
Snow cleverly summed up as follows You can't win.
You can't break even.
You can't quit the game. Let's unpack these a bit. 
 
By saying you
can't win, Snow meant that since
matter and energy are conserved, you
can't get one without giving up some
of the other (i.e., E=mc²). It also means
that for an engine to produce work, you have to
supply heat, although in
anything other than a perfectly closed
system, some heat is inevitably lost to
the outside world, which then leads to
the second law. 
 The second statement -- you
can't
break even -- means that due to ever-
increasing entropy, you can't return to
the same energy state. Energy
concentrated in one place will always
flow to places of lower concentration. 
Finally, the
third law -- you can't quit
the game -- refers to absolute zero, the
lowest theoretical temperature
possible, measured at zero Kelvin or
(minus 273.15 degrees Celsius and
minus 459.67 degrees Fahrenheit). When a
system reaches absolute zero,
molecules stop all movement, meaning
that there is no kinetic energy, and
entropy reaches its lowest possible
value. But in the real world, even in the
recesses of space, reaching absolutely zero is
impossible -- you can only get
very close to it. 
 
 4.Archimedes' Buoyancy
Principle : 
According to Archimedes'buoyancy
principle, the force acting on, or
buoying, a submerged or partially
submerged object equals the weight
of the liquid that the object displaces.
This sort of principle has an immense range of
applications and is essential
to calculations of density, as well as
designing submarines and other
oceangoing vessels. 
 
 3. Evolution and Natural
Selection In a basic sense, this differentiation
occurred through evolution, through
descent with modification 
 
 Populations of organisms
developed different traits, through
mechanisms such as mutation. Those with traits
that were more beneficial to
survival such as, a frog whose brown
coloring allows it to be camouflaged in
a swamp, were naturally selected for
survival; hence the term natural
selection. It's possible to expand upon both of
these theories at greater length, but
this is the basic, and groundbreaking,
discovery that Darwin made in the
19th century: that evolution through
natural selection accounts for the tremendous
diversity of life on Earth. 
 
2.Theory of General
Relativity: 
Albert Einstein's theory of general
relativity remains an important and
essential discovery because it
permanently altered how we look at
the universe.
Einstein's major
breakthrough was to say that space and time are
not absolutes and that
gravity is not simply a force applied to
an object or mass. Rather, the gravity
associated with any mass curves the
very space and time (often called
space-time) around it. 
 
 To conceptualize this,
imagine you're
traveling across the Earth in a straight
line, heading east, starting somewhere
in the Northern Hemisphere. After a
while, if someone were to pinpoint
your position on a map, you'd actually be both
east and far south of your
original position. That's because the
Earth is curved. To travel directly east,
you'd have to take into account the
shape of the Earth and angle yourself
slightly north. (Think about the difference
between a flat paper map
and a spherical globe.) 
 
1. Heisenberg's
Uncertainty Principle : 
Einstein's broader theory of
relativity
told us more about how the universe
works and helped to lay the
foundation for quantum physics, but it
also introduced more confusion into
theoretical science. In 1927, this sense that the
universe's laws were, in some
contexts, flexible, led to a
groundbreaking discovery by the
German scientist Werner Heisenberg. In
postulating his Uncertainty
Principle, Heisenberg realized that it
was impossible to simultaneously
know, with a high level of precision,
two properties of a particle. In other
words, you can know the position of an electron
with a high degree of
certainty, but not its momentum and
vice versa. Niels Bohr later made a discovery that
helps to explain Heisenberg's
principle. Bohr found that an electron
has the qualities of both a particle and
a wave, a concept known as wave-
particle duality, which has become a cornerstone
of quantum physics. So
when we measure an electron's
position, we are treating it as a particle
at a specific point in space, with an
uncertain wavelength. When we
measure its momentum, we are treating it as a wave,
meaning we can know the amplitude of its
wavelength
but not its location.

Top 10 Scientific Laws and Theories that you Should Really Know.

10. Big Bang Theory If you're going to know one scientific theory, make it the one that explains how the universe arrived at its present state. Based on research performed by Edwin Hubble, Georges L…

28 Oct 2014

THE HIGHER YOU GO, THE COOLER IT BECOMES

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YES I know the tittle sounds ridiculous because we do know that the sun is situated far higher in space. 
 
Also I guess it's normal for everyone to think that the further you move into the atmosphere,  the higher the heat intensity should be provided we're inch closer to the sun. 
Nevertheless,  this Phenomenon proves your thinking wrong with fantastic reasons. 
However this phenomenon is only true during the day. 
 
 Let's unravel the mystery now... 
 
Explanation of the phenomenon "the higher you  go, the cooler it becomes". 
 
In the atmosphere, there're no objects by which heat can be absorbed unlike the earth's surface where heat is absorbed by numerous objects. Those objects especially the good conductors in turn transfer the heat to surrounding objects or whatever they come in contact with. 
 
In other words, you just touched a desk that has been exposed to the sun; you felt the hotness of the desk because the heat absorbed by the object has been transferred to you. That way, heat is easily circulated on the earth surface. 
So the remnant of the heat radiation absorbed by the ozone layer comes directly to the earth surface leaving the atmosphere free from heat because there're no objects there let alone a conductor... 
Thus place nearer to the earth surface is warmer than the farer one. 
But in the night, it's the reverse because  there's no more heat radiation and the heat contents on the earth's surface is being evaporated leaving the earth's surface cool... 
 
You should figure out the rest! 
Greetings!!! 
</div>

THE HIGHER YOU GO, THE COOLER IT BECOMES

YES I know the tittle sounds ridiculous because we do know that the sun is situated far higher in space. Also I guess it's normal for everyone to think that the further you move into the atmosphere, …

28 Oct 2014

DOES THE MOON MOVE?

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This's a very good question every learned person 
would like to know. Have you ever wondered why
the moon is in a different place every night?. 
 
There are two reasons. 
 
First of all, it depends on 
what time of day you are looking at the moon. For example, if you go outside tonight at 7:00 and tomorrow at 11:00, you would see the moon in two very different places in the sky. Not only that, but all the stars would be in different places in the sky as well!   
This is because the earth is spinning. 
It takes 24 hours for the the earth to spin once 
around, which means that from our point of view 
(sitting on the earth's surface) it looks like the 
sky and everything in it is moving around us once 
per 24 hours. (This is the same reason that the 
sun rises and sets every day, giving us daytime 
and nighttime.) 
 
But what would happen if you went outside on the second night at the exact same time you went out on the first night (7:00)? 
The stars will be in almost the same part of the sky as they were the first night. (Since you waited 24 hours, they had time to "move" around the earth once and get back to where they were before.) But the moon will be in a different place! In fact, you would have to wait a little while (usually an extra 30 minutes or an hour) until it got back to the same place as it was the night before. 
 
So what happened? 
How come the moon "fell behind" everything else? 
The answer is that the moon is moving. All the 
stars in the sky are pretty much standing still - 
they only look like they're moving because the 
earth is spinning, as I said above. But the moon 
is actually moving in orbit around the earth - it 
takes about a month for it to complete one circle 
around us.   
So the moon's motion has two parts to 
it. It looks like it's moving around the earth once 
per day along with everything else, but in addition to that it is actually moving around the earth once per month. That is what makes it move to a different place on the sky. 
It is even possible to watch the moon move, if 
you are patient enough. 
 
 If you carefully keep track of the moon and a nearby star for an hour or so, you should be able to see the distance between them change! 
 
 Moreover the moon is a satellite and all satellites 
move.</div>

DOES THE MOON MOVE?

This's a very good question every learned person would like to know. Have you ever wondered why the moon is in a different place every night?. There are two reasons. First of all, it depends on wha…

24 Oct 2014

WHY DO WE SALIVATE ON SIGHTING THE FOOD WE LIKE

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Well there is no theory behind this statement . It's
only an assumption. 
 
Here is my own view; 
 
When we think of good food we want to eat, we are tickling our appetite. When we do so, our salivary glands produce more saliva (hence our mouth "watering") in lieu of the effects to our appetite. 
Saliva contains enzymes and lubricants that help you begin the process of digestion as soon as food gets in your mouth. 
When you think of savory food, 
your body takes this as a cue to start gearing up for another round of digestion. 
Your 3 salivary glands (parotids, sublinguals, and submentals) begin excreting what they have stored and producing more for the upcoming morsel. 
 
This process of preparing to begin digesting food manifests a "watering" in your mouth. 
People with Sjogren's Syndrome lose their salivary glands, therefore their mouths don't undergo the same "watering" reaction that most people experience in response to savory food.</div>

WHY DO WE SALIVATE ON SIGHTING THE FOOD WE LIKE

Well there is no theory behind this statement . It's only an assumption. Here is my own view; When we think of good food we want to eat, we are tickling our appetite. When we do so, our salivary glan…

24 Oct 2014

WHY DO WE DREAM?

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First, let’s start by answering a basic question – 
What is a dream? 
 A dream can include any of the images, thoughts and emotions that are experienced during sleep. Dreams can be extraordinarily vivid or very vague; filled with joyful emotions or frightening imagery; focused and understandable or unclear and confusing. 
 
So why do we dream? 
What purpose dreams serve? 
 
While many theories have been proposed, no single consensus has emerged. Considering the enormous amount of time we spend in a dreaming state, the fact that researchers do not yet understand the purpose of dreams may seem baffling.   
However, it is important to consider that science is still unraveling the exact purpose and function of sleep itself. 
Some researchers suggest that dreams serve no 
real purpose, while others believe that dreaming is essential to mental, emotional and physical well-being. 
 
Ernest Hoffman, director of the Sleep Disorders Center at Newton Wellesley Hospital in Boston, Mass., suggests that "...a possible (though 
certainly not proven) function of a dream is to be 
weaving new material into the memory system in a way that both reduces emotional arousal and is adaptive in helping us cope with further trauma or stressful events."   
Next, let’s learn more about some of the most 
prominent dream theories. 
 
Psychoanalytic Theory of Dreams: 
Consistent with the psychoanalytic perspective, 
Sigmund Freud’s theory of dreams suggested that dreams were a representation of unconscious desires, thoughts and motivations. According to Freud’s psychoanalytic view of personality, people are driven by aggressive and sexual instincts that are repressed from conscious awareness. 
While these thoughts are not consciously expressed, Freud suggested that they find their way into our awareness via dreams. 
 
In his famous book The Interpretation of Dreams, 
Freud wrote that dreams are "...disguised 
fulfillments of repressed wishes." He also described two different components of dreams: manifest content and latent content. 
Manifest content is made up of the actual images, thoughts and content contained within the dream, while the latent content represents the hidden psychological meaning of the dream. 
Freud’s theory contributed to the popularity of 
dream interpretation, which remains popular today. 
However, research has failed to demonstrate that 
the manifest content disguises the real psychological significance of a dream. 
 
Activation- Synthesis Model of Dreaming: 
The activation-synthesis model of dreaming was 
first proposed by J. Allan Hobson and Robert 
McClarley in 1977. According to this theory, circuits in the brain become activated during REM sleep which causes areas of the limbic system involved in emotions, sensations and memories, including the amygdala and hippocampus, to become active. 
The brain synthesizes and interprets this internal activity and attempts to find meaning in these signals, which results in dreaming. 
This model suggests that dreams are a subjective interpretation of signals generated by the brain during sleep. 
While this theory suggests that dreams are the 
result of internally generated signals, Hobson does not believe that dreams are meaningless. Instead, he suggests that dreaming is "…our most creative conscious state, one in which the chaotic, spontaneous recombination of cognitive elements produces novel configurations of information: new ideas. While many or even most of these ideas may be nonsensical, if even a few of its fanciful products are truly useful, our dream time will not have been wasted." 
 
Information-Processing Theories: 
One of the major theories to explain why we sleep is that sleep allows us to consolidate and process all of the information that we have collected during the previous day. 
Some dream experts suggest that dreaming is simply a by product or even an active part of this information-processing. 
As we deal with the multitude of information and memories from the daytime, our sleeping minds create images, impressions, and narratives to manage all of the activity going on inside our heads as we slumber.</div>

WHY DO WE DREAM?

First, let’s start by answering a basic question – What is a dream? A dream can include any of the images, thoughts and emotions that are experienced during sleep. Dreams can be extraordinarily viv…

24 Oct 2014

NOSE: THE ULTIMATE AIR CLEANER

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Your nose does more than just decorate your face. Inside, you’re carrying around a personal air treatment system, cleverly designed to protect the delicate tissues of your lungs that transfer oxygen out of the air you breathe and into your body.Whether classically bold or cutely upturned, your nose: 
 
*.Filters the air, catching and trapping tiny particles before they can get into your lungs. 
 
*.Humidifies the air, adding moisture to keep your airways from drying out. 
 
*.Warmsthe air to body temperature beforeit reaches your lungsThis marvelous system is portable, durable–usually fairly quiet – and never needs batteries! But it does require some maintenance to keep it working at peak efficience. 
 
 
What’s Up Your Nose? 
 
When you breathe through your nose, the air goes past your nostrils into an open area inside your head called the nasal cavity before heading down your trachea and into your lungs through your windpipe.The whole system of airways is lined with a thin layer of sticky mucus that traps dust particles, bacteria and other pollutants. Tiny hairs called cilia sweep mucus from your nasal cavity into the back of your throat where it can be swallowed and neutralized in your stomach. More mucus is constantly being produced (2-4 cups perday) and the cycle goes on.An intricate network of blood vessels takes care of the heating and humidifying work. Folds of tissue (called turbinates) inside your nasal cavity provide a huge surface area of blood vessels that warm the air to body temperature and add moisture within seconds. 
 
 
Meddling With Mucus: 
 
Mucus must have just the right balance of stickness and fluidity for the filtering process to work efficiently. Allergic reactions and infections can disrupt this balance, and dry air, irritating chemicals and second hand smoke tip the scales even more.Allergens and infections alert your immune system to send extra blood cells to the lining of your nasal passages, making them swollen and inflamed (congested). 
 the same time, your nose produces extra mucus. 
This can overwhelm the cilia’s ability to clean things out – and leave you with a stuffed-up or runny nose. 
 
Strong scents and chemicals (such as those in tobacco smoke) can affect how well the cilia in your nasal cavity work, alsocausing mucus to build up.A dry nose also has trouble moving mucus effectively. When the air you breathe is very dry especially cold winter air), it may pull more moisture than usual from your nose. The resulting dried out nasal passages and thickened mucus will be less able to sweep out germs, leaving you more susceptible to disease. 
 
 
Mouth Breathing: 
 
Breathing through your mouth instead of your nose – because your nose is congested, perhaps, or during vigorous exercise – by-passes much of  your body’s natural air filtering and treatment. This can allow germs, allergens and other pollutants to get inside your lungs, where they can damage delicate tissues.It also allows unconditioned air to affect sensitive small airways. For example, drawing cold air into your lungs without letting your nose warm it up first has a two fold effect: 
 
*.The cold air makes your airways tighten up and constrict, so breathing becomes more difficult 
 
*.The dryness thickens mucus and clogs the cilia, so your lungs are less able to process oxygen and move it into your bloodstream. 
 
 
ACold in the Nose: 
A “cold” is a viral infection in the lining of your nasal passages. You may pick up the germs by touching contaminated surfaces with your hands then touching your nose or eyes or by being exposed to germs from someone’s cough or sneeze. When your nose is working efficiently, cold viruses are swept out of the nasal passages in your mucus. When it’s not, they can sit in your nose and make their way into your nasal tissue, causing infection. 
 
 
Asthma: 
Because the connection between the nose and lungs is so important, keeping your nose healthy can help reduce problems in the lungs such as asthma symptoms. Sensitive airways already compromised by underlying inflammation are primed and ready to react when exposed to allergens, irritants, excess mucus or cold air. 
 
 
How To Maintain a Healthy Nose: 
 
Although you can’t always control the temperature or contents of the air you breathe, you can take steps to keep your nose as healthy as possible by following these tips: 
 
*.Drink plenty of water to keep mucus thin and fluid. 
 
*.Help warm the air you breathe in cold weather by wearing a scarf over your nose and mouth. 
 
*.Keep nasal passages moist with saltwater nasal washes or sprays, especially if you are exposed to dry air, allergens or infection. 
 
*.When using nasal sprays, be careful to direct the spray toward the outer surface of your nasal passage, away from the center of your nose, to avoid damaging the septum (the tissue that separates the two sides of your nasal passage). 
 
*.Limit your use of decongestant sprays, which can damage the cilia that clear the nose and sinuses. 
*.Ask your healthcare professional whether any other medications you take could contribute to nasal problems. 
 
 
 For instance, diuretic blood pressure medications and some anti-anxiety medications have a drying effect on nose and throat; birth control pills, betablockerblood pressure medicines and erectile dysfunction medication can increase nasal congestion;eye drops can aggravate nasal symptoms when they drain into the nose with tears.</div>

NOSE: THE ULTIMATE AIR CLEANER

Your nose does more than just decorate your face. Inside, you’re carrying around a personal air treatment system, cleverly designed to protect the delicate tissues of your lungs that transfer oxygen …

09 Oct 2014

SUN PILLAR

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Sun pillar is a halo phenomenon of a vertical shaft of
light extending upward or downward from the sun.
Typically seen during sunrise or sunset, sun pillars
form when sunlight reflects off the surfaces of ice
crystals associated with thin, high-level clouds
(e.g.cirrostrat us clouds). The hexagonal plate-like
ice crystals fall with a horizontal orientation, gently
rocking from side to side as they fall. 
 
When the sun
is low on the horizon, an area of brightness appears
in the sky above (or below) the sun as sunlight is
reflected off the surfaces of these tipped ice crystals.
However, often only the upper pillar appears.
Sun pillars are seen best within a few minutes of
sunrise or sunset. Initially the have about the same
colour and width as the sun, but sunpillars will
gradually change their colour from orange-white to
red-orange. Sun pillars generally fade 20 to 60
minutes after sunset. 
 
Under favourable conditions,
e.g. icy fog, sun pillars might stretch out up to 30°
above the sun, while light streaks of 5° to 10° are
most common.
On rare occasions, regarded with awe in more
superstitious times, it may occur with part of the
parhelic cycle to give the appearance of a cross
centred on the Sun. The sun pillar is comparable with
the light course, the setting sun produces on a water
surface.</div>

SUN PILLAR

Sun pillar is a halo phenomenon of a vertical shaft of light extending upward or downward from the sun. Typically seen during sunrise or sunset, sun pillars form when sunlight reflects off the surfac…

06 Oct 2014

THE MIRAGE

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It's 2:00 p.m. on a very hot afternoon, and
we've just pulled out of the entrance to the
express road. Far ahead of us a puddle seems to
be continuously evaporating off the sun-baked
pavement, its receding edge matching its speed
to ours. Even when my old man floor the
accelerator we
can't catch up to the water, but somehow the
cars passing ours easily do. They
drive into it without a splash, and they seem to be
reflected in it, upside down. 
 
Of course, real water doesn't behave this way.
The retreating puddle is just the most familiar
form of that often misunderstood phenomenon
of air and light, the mirage. 
Is the puddle mirage real or is it an illusion? It's
actually a little of both-straightforward physics
plus the workings of the human mind. Add a
little dehydration, which we almost always
experience on hot days like this, and perhaps
we're even more inclined to see water where it
isn't! Scientists relax and read. 
 
To understand how a mirage forms, one must
first understand how light travels through air.
If the air is all the same temperature--cold or
hot--light travels through it in a straight line. If
a steady temperature gradient exists, however,
light will follow a curved path toward the
cooler air.
The standard freshman physics
explanation for this phenomenon is that cold air
has a higher index of refraction than warm air
does. As a result, photons (particles of light)
travel through hot air faster than they can
through cold air because the hot air is less
dense. 
 
The quantum electrodynamics
explanation is that photons always take the
path of minimum time when traveling from one
point to another. In order to get from one point
to another in a minimum time, photons will take
"shortcuts" even though the length of the path
is curved and it covers a longer distance than
the direct route.
Mirages are a direct result of photons taking the
path of minimum time in vertical temperature
gradients. Ideal conditions for a mirage are still
air on a hot, sunny day over a flat surface that
will absorb the sun's energy and become quite
hot.
When these conditions exist, the air closest
to the surface is hottest and least dense and the
air density gradually increases with height.
Incoming photons take a curved path from the
sky to the viewer's eye.
The illusion comes from
the fact that quantum electrodynamics is not
intuitive and the human brain assumes that
light travels in a straight line.
A viewer looking at, say, the road ahead on a hot,
still, day will see the sky because photons from
the sky are taking the curved path that minimizes
the time taken. The brain interprets this as water
on the road because water would reflect light from
the sky in much the same way that a vertical
temperature gradient does.</div>

THE MIRAGE

It's 2:00 p.m. on a very hot afternoon, and we've just pulled out of the entrance to the express road. Far ahead of us a puddle seems to be continuously evaporating off the sun-baked pavement, its re…

01 Oct 2014

HOW DO CLOUDS AND RAIN FORM

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Water vapour saturation: 
 The air in our atmosphere always contains some
water vapour, whose density can only climb to a
certain saturation value at any given temperature.
The maximum possible water vapour content of the
air however increases out of proportion to any
increase in temperature. Equally, it is always
possible to cool an air parcel, reducing the water
vapour saturation value, to a temperature at which
the water in it starts to condense. The temperature
at which this starts to happen is known as the dew
point. Further cooling results in the excess water
vapour being deposited onto fixed surfaces (dew
formation) or onto condensation nuclei, leading to
the formation of droplets. Tiny particles of various
origin, the so-called aerosols, are usually present in
abundance in the atmosphere and serve as these
condensation nuclei. 
 
Clouds: 
 As an air parcel rises it cools, the water vapour
condensing when it reaches the dew point. Sunlight
is scattered from the resultant droplets so that the
emergent clouds can be seen by human eyes by
their white, diffuse light. The best example of this is
when air parcels rise from the warm ground in
summer; those with only a small buoyancy
compared to the surrounding atmosphere produce
‘fine weather’ clouds, those with stronger buoyancy
climb higher and form thick clouds and heavy
rainfall.
In low pressure systems with their cyclonic (anti-
clockwise, in the northern hemisphere) air flow,
warm, humid, subtropical air is transported to the
north-east. Due to its lower density it moves up
over the colder northern air, cooling as it rises. This
is how clouds form on the warm fronts of such
pressure systems in the mid-latitudes. Conversely,
on the western side of the low the cold air moves
southward, pushing under the warmer subtropical
air and raising it up above its condensation level to
form clouds on the cold front. Clouds can also be
formed from the cooling and condensation that
occurs when air flows over physical obstructions
like mountain ranges. 
 
 Precipitation: 
Cloud droplets are tiny, only 1/100 mm in diameter,
and are thus very light and practically float freely in
the air. As the droplets collide, with time some grow
larger than others and start to slowly fall, falling
faster as they accumulate more and more droplets.
If the cloud of droplets is dense enough to form
droplets greater than 1/10 mm in diameter through
this process, the droplets survive the fall through
the air below the cloud, despite evaporation, and
reach the ground as rain. This process develops
what is known as ‘warm rain’, but in our part of the
world it is responsible for only the weakest drizzle
from near surface clouds. In the warm tropics it is
responsible for intense rainfall from clouds lower
than 5 km.
More important in the formation of heavier rain is a
process that involves frozen particles. Although the
temperature at cloud level is often below 0 ºC, the
droplets themselves remain in liquid form – this is
known as ‘super cooling’. In these circumstances, a
tiny disturbance (a collision, or the presence of a
suitable ice nuclei) is enough to cause the droplets
to suddenly freeze solid. Water vapour condenses
more easily onto ice particles than onto liquid water
droplets, so these ice particles grow faster than the
surrounding droplets and begin to fall sooner. They
grow further through the accumulation of other
droplets and quickly become large enough to reach
ground level. Since the ice particles encounter ever
warmer layers of the atmosphere as they fall, they
often melt as they fall and reach the ground as rain.
If they have formed in a very thick cloud however
they can become so large that they do not melt
before they reach the ground and fall as granulated
ice particles. Storm clouds can contain upward
winds that are so strong that ice particles that have
already melted at the surface are pulled back up
into the cloud and freeze anew. At some point they
will fall again, growing by the accumulation of other
droplets and melting again. Occasionally this
process is repeated a number of times, leading to
the eventual formation of large, layered hailstones. 
 
Types of Clouds : 
 Clouds are basically divided into two classes, based
on appearance: there are single layer (stratiform)
clouds and accumulated (cumuliform) clouds, which
can both occur at different altitudes throughout the
troposphere. Stratiform clouds are formed through
the large-scale rising of entire layers of air, whilst
cumulus clouds are primarily formed through the
action of small scale vertical mixing processes. The
following table gives a brief overview of the
appellations of the main cloud types:
Clouds are further named to denote their origin,
details of their appearance or their degree of
development (e.g. St Fr – Stratus Fractus – Broken
Stratus)</div>

HOW DO CLOUDS AND RAIN FORM

Water vapour saturation: The air in our atmosphere always contains some water vapour, whose density can only climb to a certain saturation value at any given temperature. The maximum possible water …

01 Oct 2014