• Question: can you make a cloud?

    Asked by anon-187180 to Stewart, Miriam, Marton, Laura, Kathryn, David on 9 Nov 2018.
    • Photo: David Ho

      David Ho answered on 9 Nov 2018: last edited 9 Nov 2018 7:17 pm

      Yes! Clouds are made up of very small droplets of water that float in the air, so if you’ve got a way of making tiny water droplets you’ve made a cloud. An example of a man-made cloud that I’m sure you’re familiar with is the trails that aeroplanes leave in the sky behind them!

      Another really cool use of man-made clouds is to detect tiny particles. A “cloud chamber” contains a lot of water (or alcohol) vapour — so when a particle passes through it tiny clouds form along its path and you can see where it’s been, even though the actual particles are way too tiny to see.

      There’s a great youtube video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFVZU2YwwJ4.

      You can even make cloud chambers yourself using equipment that most schools should have access to. Maybe suggest something like this to your science teacher… https://www.sciencefriday.com/educational-resources/build-a-cloud-chamber/

    • Photo: Stewart Martin-Haugh

      Stewart Martin-Haugh answered on 9 Nov 2018:

      Great answer from David. Fun fact about cloud chambers – they were invented to study clouds, but then it turned out to be a happy accident that you can see traces of particles coming from outer space in them.

    • Photo: Miriam Hogg

      Miriam Hogg answered on 11 Nov 2018:

      David and Stewart answered this very well. Yes clouds are just droplets of gas that have condensed.
      On Earth clouds are just formed of H20 (Water). But on other planets the clouds can be made of other elements. Jupiter has clouds made up of ammonia. Neptune has clouds of methane. Venus has sulphur dioxide clouds.

      Different conditions of other planets can cause lots of different types of cloud and rain! There are theories that other planets can rain liquid metals!

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