New answers tagged clouds
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Clouds are large masses of tiny liquid water droplets suspended in water vapor-saturated atmosphere (100% relative humidity). At a constant altitude and temperature, this system is in equilibrium: there's always some exchange of water molecules from the surface of these droplets into the surrounding saturated atmosphere and vice versa. Water droplets will ...
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(English is not my first language, so be nice if the words are wrong)
Basically it's kinetic energy of the water molecules (above 0 K, absolute zero); that energy isn't evenly distributed, so a few molecules have higher energy than others.
Some have enough energy to "jump off", becoming an isolated "gas molecule", leaving the others ...
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Clouds form in areas where the relative humidity exceeds 100%. Add enough dry air to a cloud and the relative humidity drops below 100%, making the cloud dissipate. It's that simple.
Or almost that simple. Entrainment occurs because clouds are large. The dry air isn't instantaneously injected throughout the cloud. It instead erodes the cloud from the edges. ...
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You may be assuming cloud droplets are in a "rest" state or some finite ordered state. Cloud droplets are actually growing/shrinking continuously as each molecule of water reacts to its environment and either condenses, evaporates, or remains in solution. Atmospheric pressure aloft is also low enough that the "boiling point" of water ...
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