Results tagged “rain” from 60 Second Science

Remember how when you were little and it rained, your parents told you God is crying because you did something wrong? Turns out it's actually just a whole host of bacteria coalescing into ice and plummeting back to Earth. Because you did something wrong.

Brent Christner of Louisiana State University, with colleagues in Montana and France, reported today in Science that most ice nucleators, particles ice forms around, found in snow at mid- and high-latitude locations were biological in origin. I.e., it's just just the yellow snow you need to worry about. It's pretty much all filled with creepy crawlies (or, more appropriately, fearsome flagellum).

Their guess, then, is that the bacteria affects the rain cycle or actually causes their own precipitation.

Continue reading 'Why's it raining? Bacteria. That's why.' >

While rappers around the world are obsessed with making it rain every month on time, Beijing just wants it to stop. In a "when you have a hammer the whole world looks like a nail" situation, the Beijing Meteorological Bureau has been assigned the job of preventing rain during the upcoming Olympics because, at least in part, there's no roof on the fancy new Bird's Nest stadium. And it's working. Mostly.

"Our experiments with rain mitigation have been aimed at light rain," Zhang Qian, head of weather manipulation at the bureau, told a conference. "With heavy rain it is more difficult. The results with light rain have been satisfactory."

That's right, don't worry about the poison air. Just stop the rain.

Continue reading 'Beijing stops the rain' >

Here comes the rain again…

Those April showers may bring something in addition to May flowers. You’ve heard of solar power and wind power, but what about rain power?

It's good news for all the rain dogs out there... French scientists have created a machine that can capture kinetic energy carried by a rain drop as it plummets to the ground. According to their models, the machine can capture about 12 milliwatts from a large raindrop (5 mm diameter) that hits the machine.

From the physorg.com article:

To capture the raindrops’ mechanical energy, the scientists used a PVDF (polyvinylidene fluoride) polymer, a piezoelectric material that converts mechanical energy into electrical energy. When a raindrop impacts the 25-micrometer-thick PVDF, the polymer starts to vibrate. Electrodes embedded in the PVDF are used to recover the electrical charges generated by the vibrations.

The researchers discuss their work in Smart Materials and Structures.

Continue reading 'Powered by Rain' >