Eli5 why water doesn’t go back to liquid ? It need to be 100°C to evaporate but once in the air it is not 100°C anymore so how is it that it stay gaz?
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What keeps water as water is surface tension. When a water molecules has sufficient energy to break free of the surface tension (whether the water is boiling or not) it breaks free of the water and exists in a gaseous state far away from other water molecules. For water to condense back into water it must meetup with some other water molecules. This starts to happen at the dew point. At this temperature there is enough water in the air and the heat energy is low enough that water molecules are likely to run into each other and stick together. Other water molecules meet up and decide to join. If enough meet up and stick together they’ll get large enough that they can’t remain suspended in the air and will fall to the ground as rain.
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