THROUGH THE EYES OF WONDER

I was visiting one of my “older” friends today and we were discussing, or so I assumed, physics. The exact thing that brought it up was the storm that was running rampant across Arizona today, dropping snow and significant rain.  And, yes, I know significant for us, is like nothing to the rest of America.  I won’t even go there.

But the subject was this.  If the clouds are full of water, which is heavier than air, what holds them up?  My immediate response was “God does”.  My friend’s response?   “How?”  And a great discussion ensued which left me wondering “How?” 

So of course I got on the internet to check it out.  Science is not my forte, after all.  I must rely on what real scientists have discovered.  So here is what I found.  Bear with me, please.

From Scientific American.  (The short version without radius squared and all that stuff.)

“Even though typical clouds do contain a lot of water, this water is spread out for miles in the form of tiny water droplets or crystals, which are so small that the effect of gravity on them is negligible. Thus, from our vantage on the ground, clouds seem to float in the sky.”

From Mental Floss

“Figure out how dense the cloud is. Scientists have measured the water density of a typical cumulus cloud (the white, fluffy ones you see on a nice day) as 1/2 gram per cubic meter—about a small marble’s worth of water in a space you and a friend could comfortably sit in. The density will be greater for different types of clouds. “

(So my friend Yolie and I can’t float, how does a cloud? And then the answer.. sheesh.)

“If elephants or donkeys or dinosaurs were hanging out in the sky, they’d fall. So how does a several-hundred-ton cloud stay afloat? For one thing, the weight isn’t concentrated in a hundred elephant-sized particles or even a billion marble-sized ones. It’s distributed among trillions of really tiny water droplets spread out over a really big space. Some of these droplets are so small that you would need a million of them to make one raindrop, and gravity’s effect on them is pretty negligible.”

 (And now we are elephants and donkeys and DINOSAURS??  Well, maybe my OLDER friends are dinosaurs, but I am not.  At least not yet. More like a donkey, but REALLY?)

This afternoon, after returning home and completing my “research”, the most glorious sunset with the most intricately woven clouds of all colors appeared.  There were dark clouds with flat bottoms, golden ones with red tinges, Orange ones, Dark blue and grey ones, and a glorious white one behind them all.  As I sat there viewing it in awe, it occurred to me.  I really don’t give a fiddle how clouds are held up there.  I know WHO holds them up and that is all that matters, and then it hit me.

The WONDER of clouds, the sky, the earth, Trees and plants.  Air creatures and water creatures and HUMANS…..

And I had my answer for my friend.   GOD DOES. 

Psalm 8: 3 -4  “When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers,
The moon and the stars, which You have ordained,
What is man that You are mindful of him,
And the son of man that You visit him?”