Condensation is when water vapor accumulates on a cold surface. Why, when it is cold outside, does moisture not condense onto surfaces?
In: Physics
Condensation happens when the surface is cold and the air is warm. When it’s cold outside the surface is cold but so is the air.
How much moisture can air hold depends on air temperature. Hotter air holds more moisture. So you will see much more condensation on cold stuff surrunded by hot moist air. We can assume that air touching something is same temerature as the thing it touches. And if that thing is colder than surrounding air, it can hold less moisture. This means that some of the moisture has to convert to water.
There is some condensation outside but its less because most of the time everything outside is same temperature as air
Cold air doesn’t carry as much moisture so it’s more difficult to get significant condensation.
You can draw what little moisture there is out of cold, dry air with a sufficiently cold surface – forming frost.
It does. It’s called “dew”. Dew usually forms in the wee hours of the morning when it’s cold and then evaporates in the sun.
It does. This is why you get dew on grass and frost on your windshield. It happens at the dew point which you should be able to find on most weather sites.
Hot air can hold a lot more moisture than cold air, so generally you see condensation when hot air full of moisture cools down and loses its moisture when it touches something cold. When it’s cold outside, the air is also cold and not holding much moisture.
As temp drops, it also reduces moisture holding capacity of air, now coming back to your question, if the surface is cold it will also reduce temperature of surrounding air and as a result moisture will accumulate on that surface for example a glass of cold water.
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