Earth Sciences Forum

weatherwasabi · Joined: 11 Jan 2009 Posts: 1

Hello all, new to the forum. Particularly interested in Meteorology and look forward to posting on these boards. To start, I am trying to replicate an experiment that my Meteorology teacher showed me in college. He had a large glass container (I will be using a filtering flask). He put some water in the bottom and then lit a match - he let the smoke into the glass container and closed it. After this, he pumped out air using a hand pump (at least i am pretty sure he was pumping air out and not in). When he removed the pump and created a sudden pressure change, a cloud immediately formed in the bottle. Now, I am a little rusty of the topic of cloud formation so I am having trouble relating that to what is going on within the bottle and how it is that this makes a cloud. Same basic mechanisms as within the atmosphere, I guess, but I cannot find a description of this specific experiment or anyone else who has done it. Has anyone done this? I know the smoke particles are acting as condensation nuclei, but otherwise, I'm having trouble describing the process. Thanks

- Wasabi