Clouds are nothing but water vapor and an invisible gas combined to form liquid water droplets. The water droplets bind to other dust particles in the air and form a droplet around each dust particle. Clouds form primarily through evaporation and condensation.
Some of the liquid water that you heated in Making Clouds evaporated, or changed from a liquid to an invisible gas called water vapor. The ice cooled the water vapor so that it turned into tiny water droplets, but since the tiny droplets were so small, they remained floating in the air, forming a cloud.
Then, what is the water in a cloud?
First of all, a cloud is not a sponge made out of some other material which soaks up water. The water in a cloud isthe cloud. More accurately, a cloud consists of very small liquid water drops or ice crystals suspended in air.
How are clouds formed?
Clouds are created when water vapor, an invisible gas, turns into liquid water droplets. These water droplets form on tiny particles, like dust, that are floating in the air. A camera on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this image of clouds over the Southern Indian Ocean. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.
How do clouds form in the atmosphere?
When warm, moist air moves upward in an updraft, puffy cumulus clouds may form in the atmosphere. The moisture in the air condenses into water droplets as it rises.
How do clouds make thunder?
Thunder is caused by lightning. When a lightning bolt travels from the cloud to the ground it actually opens up a little hole in the air, called a channel. Once then light is gone the air collapses back in and creates a sound wave that we hear as thunder.
You need cold air and warm air. When they meet, the warm air goes up. It makes thunderstorm clouds! The cold air has ice crystals.
What causes lightning to occur in clouds?
The moving air within the cloud builds up electric charges as it slides past other air. The build-up of electric charges allows lightning to form, much in the same way that you can create a spark after shuffling your feet on a carpet. Thunder is the sound that happens when lightning strikes.
However, most of us aren’t all that familiar with how thunder and lightning are produced in a thunderstorm. Put simply, lightning is a result of electrons moving between the clouds and the ground, and thunder comes as a result of lightning.
One of the next things we wanted the answer to was what causes a thunderstorm to form?
To create a thunderstorm, the unstable air needs to have a nudge upward. This lift usually comes from differences in air density. Warmer, less dense air rises upward, creating lift. As the air lifts higher and higher, it causes a storm cloud to grow taller and taller. Thunderstorm clouds can rise up to 10 miles into the air!
Another inquiry we ran across in our research was “Why do thunderstorms make noise when they hit?”.
However, the grumbles and growls we hear in thunderstorms actually come from the rapid expansion of the air surrounding the lightning bolt. As lightning connects to the ground from the clouds, a second stroke of lightning will return from the ground to the clouds, following the same channel as the first strike.
How do you make your own cloud?
Follow the steps below to create your own cloud and see this process in action! Form the water vapor Fill a jar with 2 inches (5 cm) of warm water and stir. The warm water will form water vapor through a process called evaporation.
Cloud-to-cloud lightning happens when positively and negatively charged ions interact within areas of the cloud, ignoring the ground. Usually, it happens within opposite halves of the same cloud, but sometimes it can shoot from cloud to cloud.