Have you ever suspected you might have a conversation like this?Johnny: Hey Fred, nice to meet you. I'm a salesman, what do you do for a living?
Fred: Nice to meet you, Johnny. I measure the velocity of raindrops for a living!
Not me, but now I know it could happen. Physicist from Michigan Technological University (MTU) in Houghton and the National University of Mexico in Mexico City have been studying the velocity of raindrops and confirmed that indeed smaller raindrops can have higher velocities than larger, heavier raindrops.
According to the Science Magazine article written by Phil Berardelli, "Over several years, the team clocked about 64,000 raindrops falling in Mexico City. The researchers measured their sizes and velocities only in extremely calm conditions, so the wind that often accompanies rain could not skew the data. They found that some drops plummeted faster than the so-called terminal velocity for their size--the speed, based on a well-established scale, at which air resistance counteracts the accelerative force of gravity."
According to Raymond Shaw of MTU, "Weather forecasting models depend on simplified theories of how raindrops grow, [so] the more we understand about the interactions between drops, ... the more we can improve our ability to predict whether it will rain on tomorrow's picnic."
Meanwhile, try these rainy day scientific activities yourself:
Measuring Raindrops (KGMB 9, Hawaii)
How to Measure the Speed of Falling Raindrops (eHow)
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