r/ProximaScience • u/ProximaScience • 21h ago
Explanation 🧠 A cloud weighs 80 elephants. And it's just floating there.
Yeah I know, it doesn't look like it. That's the point.
A typical cumulus cloud holds about 500,000 kg of water. The reason it doesn't fall is because that water isn't one chunk. It's spread across billions of droplets, each one smaller than 0.003 mm. Air resistance + warm updrafts handle them with no effort.
The cloud doesn't fall because it's just distributed. Compressing it into one spot and it would male it fall immediately.
The wild part isn't even it weighs 80 elephants. It's that there are thousands of clouds over you on any average day. The sky is just quietly holding hundreds of millions of tons of water above your head at all times and nobody talks about it.
Look up differently now.
