This evening at dinner Corwin asked us how clouds stay up. He has been studying about gravity in school (which pulls us all down and holds the air to the Earth). Corwin was confused about how clouds stayed up if gravity pulls everything down, so we did an experiment with water and ice to show that something float even though gravity pulls at them. Corwin claims that he started wondering about clouds all on his own which is neat.
http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/feb99/917571193.Ph.r.html
Check this web site for an answer to the clouds question
Even a small cloud contains many tons of water. Stop and think! You can’t keep tons of water up in the air merely by breaking it up into tiny droplets. The droplets would still fall, but they would drag the surrounding air downwards.
In truth, clouds stay up there because water cools when it evaporates and it gets hot when it condenses. In other words, clouds are warm! As the h20 gas condenses to form cloud droplets, heat is released. The droplets are warm, and they heat the air within the cloud. Liquid water is heavy, but hot air rises. The two effects balance out. (Actually, the hot air usually wins, and large clouds billow upwards rather than just floating along.)
More at: MISCONCEPTIONS FOUND IN TEXTBOOKS http://amasci.com/miscon/miscon4.htmlIt’s not clear that these are contradictory. Water condensing gives off heat, warming the nearby air which causes it to rise which is an air current that keeps the droplets suspended. Certainly for cumulus clouds, the air is already rising before the cloud forms - we only see the part where the air cross the condensation threshold (which gives cumulus those cool flat bottoms).