Lawrence Pabin, age 8, of Warren, Ohio, for his question:

How does rain get up into the sky?

We get so many showers that nobody is surprised to see big blobs of liquid rain come tumbling down from the cloudy skies. But nobody has seen those heavy raindrops climbing up from the earth to join the clouds. Yet we learn that the rain is just part of a circling cycle that takes water up from the earth and drops it down again. A thoughtful young person naturally wonders why we see only the falling water of the cycle. This is because nature fools us with a trick that our eyes cannot see.

When the sun shines bright, it evaporates tons of water from the seas and rivers, the ponds and puddles. The tiny molecules of this evaporated water separate and mingle with the air. They become invisible gas called water vapor. High in the cooler air, the separate molecules of vapor team together to form bigger drops of liquid water. These drops are big enough to be seen. When they get too heavy to float aloft, down they fall in splashing showers of rain.