William Hart, aged 7, of Columbia, 9,C, for his question:

How does the rain get in the clouds?

A drop of water can have many adventures. It fact, most of the tame it has a very exciting time, It can ride up and down. It can float for miles on a flying carpet. It can change its form. For it can be solid ice, runny water, fuzzy steam or gassy vapor. These change about depend upon the sun, the wind and the weather. Also, whether somebody lights a flame under that drop of water.

Let’s follow a drag of water through some of its adventures, We will start on a sunny morning ‑ which is a good time to start anything, Our drop of water rests near the surface of a pond, 2t is merged with countless other drops of water. There are lily white ducks about and trailing willows stand on the banks. The sun is very warm.

A line of laundry is drying in the warm air. A puddle left by a duck is drying up too. The warm sun smiles on our drop of water.  Pretty soon it begins to change, It breaks up into tiny, tiny particles. The particles change from liquid to gas.  The drop is evaporating, drying up and becoming vapor.

Now water vapor is like air. You can't see it, smell it or feel it. In fact it becomes part of the air. It rises and floats off hither and thither, the vapor from our drop of water rises high, high in the air. It rises above the pond, the ducks and the trailing willows. Boon it is a whole mile above the ground.

And that is where a new adventure begins, For up there the air is cool. The warm air below aidnrt mind an extra load of water vapor, But the cooler air above has enough troubles of its own. It cannot hold such a big load of vapor, The vapor from our drop of water must change back from invisible gas to liquid water,

It does this step by step billions of tiny vapor particles gather together. They form a droplet of water hardly big enough to be seen. But fa1111ons of these droplets together fog up the air. They farm a fuzzy cloud and we see it up there floating in the blue sky.

The cloudy little droplets are still small enough and light enough to fleet in the air, The wind wafts the cloud over land and sea. But all the time it is slowly, slowly sinking. Sooner or later, the weather changes. Billions of droplets ,join to form one drop. 'When it is large enough, the drop of water can no longer float, It must fall back to earth again, Down it splashes with thousands of other rain drops. Chances are, it falls far from the pond with the ducks and the willows. Let's say as it falls it gives a drop of moisture to a lonely cactus in a thirsty desert.