Life is just a theory

14-billion-years-later:

The physics behind raindrops.

If I were to ask you to picture in your head the shape of a raindrop you’d probably think about the standard, idealized almost pear shaped tear drop. This however is no more accurate a depiction of rain as those drawings of hearts or atoms. In reality water flattens out due to the force of the air rushing past and this effect only becomes more noticeable as the size increases. In fact smaller droplets of rain are almost totally spherical but as the size increases they get flatter and wider. Raindrops larger than about 4.5 mm however are torn apart by this force and bulge out the back, being thicker at the bottom edge. This causes them to disperse into smaller raindrops once again until they either hit the ground or join back up with other droplets and the process is repeated.