TEXT: HOW CLOUDS FORM

Water in your dog’s bowl can become a cloud.

Ok, it would take a lot of dog bowls of water to make a cloud. However, all the surface water – oceans, lakes, rivers, neighborhood pool, and, yes, even water in your yard dog’s bowl – can evaporate and become a cloud.

This is how it works: There is a lot of available water in liquid form on the Earth, mostly in the oceans. That water is heated by the solar energy of the light from the Sun. The heated water to turns into gas form, water vapor. Water vapor rises into the atmosphere where it is cooler than at the surface.

Cool air cannot hold as much water as warm air, so water vapor condenses (turns back into liquid form). The liquid droplets collect around bits of dust and cling together, which forms clouds. You can see clouds up close when the air at the surface cools and fog is formed in the same way as clouds form.

ANIMATION: WATER CYCLE

EXPLORE

Click the link to view an animated diagram of the water cycle.

INFOGRAPHIC: CHANGING PHYSICAL STATE