eli5 : Why do cloud move as a whole thing and not dissolve in the wind?

517 views

I live in a windy place. Right now, I am looking at clouds moving really fast. But cloud are just water vapor no? So how can they keep their shape and move as a whole piece instead of just being blown away by the wind?

Edit : thank you for all those detailed explanation ! I guess I’ll spend way more time looking at clouds now !!

In: Physics

7 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

They do not move as a whole. Each individual tiny droplet of water in the cloud is moving independently of all the other tiny little droplets of water.

But they are all moving independently based on essentially the same forces being applied to them. If the wind is blowing in One direction and doesn’t have a lot of different cheering forces, then it is going to push the whole cloud in one direction, and there won’t be a bunch of forces present to rip the cloud apart.

You are viewing 1 out of 7 answers, click here to view all answers.