this morning i was asked why condensation forms, from a curious little person...here goes--
the deal--
a car's exterior( or a blade of grass), cools slowly during the night( no sun to warm it), and at dawn, the sun's rays, "heat-up" the air, very quickly...the car/blade of grass, does not "heat-up" so quickly, causing a "temperature-differential" in the "thermal-halo"( for more about "thermal-halos", see my " " post), around the car...causing water-vapor to drop out of suspension, in the air closest to the car, leaving "dew"( h20), as a remainder...
note--
--( the term "thermal-halo" describes the small gap of air, between an object, and "room-temperature", where the object's "temp", and "room-temp", merge, and the small variation between them exchanges, until they equalize, as closely as possible)--
putting a finer point on things( at the molecular level)--
i believe i can describe the process of "dew formation/condensate", veery precisely...
on the molecular level, i feel that my post " ", within this blog, best describes the situation...essentially, air molecules moving at a certain speed( say, "10" as a random value), encounter the outer "halo" of air around an object, with a temp of "4", the "thermal-difference" between them, exchanges, within the "halo", until the object is almost "10", and the "thermal-halo" is a value of "10"...with this in mind...we can see, that if moisture/water-vapour( h20), is in suspension, while colliding at a rate of "10", and is then suddenly introduced into a different atmosphere, colliding at a rate of "4", the air molecules that were moving at a speed of "ten", can no longer hold their water vapour aloft, at this slower rate of travel...at this time, a compromise is made( the air molecules drop "ballast", namely the water, and things proceed without it), this exchange, leaves the remainder we call "water-vapour/dew"...a nice thing, found regularly on the side of soda cans, in the summer, and on blades of grass, spring till fall...around the globe( much to the delight of walt whitman)--
best wishes, john kruschke--
