The Ely miner. [volume] (Ely, Minn.) 1895-1986, 1928-08-24

NHE dainty clouds that float in a
summer sky and their darker
l. brothers are only mists, but they
constitute natures sharpest tool
for shaping the surface of the earth.
Over and over again, in the millions
of years they have been at work, they
have carried all the oceans and have
hurled them down upon the land-bil-
lions of cubic miles of water.
They have washed away mountains
greater than the Himalayas.
They have filled up oceans as broad
and deep as the Atlantic.
If We were to slice down through
the crust of the earth for thousands
of feet-a mile, five miles, in places
even ten-we would carve through
cloud-built rocks, sediments laid down,
grain upon grain, each carried by
drops of water that have fallen from
the skies.
The clouds have carved great val
leys such as the Grand canyon.
They bore the feathery snowflakes
which built up the huge glaciers that
crushed and ground their way equa-
forward during the Ice ages.
They furnished the chief reagent
for natures laboratory, dissolving and
bringing together the minerals scat
tered through the rocks. The salt
that savors our food, the clay tnat
builds our houses, the iron that has
made industrialism and the age of
steel-to single out but three-are
largely gifts of the clouds.
Those are the labors of the past
But the clouds are working now as
ceaselessly as they worked cons be-
fore man came upon the earth. Like
the tools of the sculptor, these chisels
of the sun, under the great mallet of
gravity are steadily shaping the earth
day by day.
They spend themselves to make the
streams, to water the crops, to feed
the world. But new cloud genera.
lions are ever coming on to take their
places.
They are mists; yet they form one
Of the staunchest pillars of life itself.
How Clouds Are Formed.
The birth of cloud is puzzle to
the observer. The sky is apparently
clear; then suddenly, seemingly from
nowhere. cloud patch is floating
aloft. Nature seems to be playing
tricks, like a conjurer who draws
kicking rabbits from an empty hat
Most clouds have their beginnings
in the oceans, started by the restless
ness of the inconceivably small and
inconceivably numerous water MOLE
CUES that have fought their adven-
turous way to these great basins.
In the form of water, these little
molecules are relatively at rest, hud-
died close to their fellows, but fairly
free to slip about in the crowd Of wa
ter particles. AS they are pressed to-
gether, they vibrate, as do all other
molecules of matter.
In the delightfully."- ordered world of
the water molecules there is more
room at the top than anywhere else,
and there the most active molecules
made more active by greater heat
make their way. Like flying fishes.
many of the molecules fall back into
the water; but, unlike them, some can
tear themselves entirely free. 1t is as
if, magically, the fish became bird
The escaped molecules are in sense
no longer water; they have become
transformed by this process of evapo-
ration into vapOr or gas.
Vapor molecules are lighter than
the oxygen and nitrogen molecules of
the air. The vapor-laden air there
fore rises for exactly the same reason
that a balloon rises. The warmer the
air, the more vapor 1t can contain. If,
on the other hand, warm air contain
ing some vapor is cooled, its capacity
for vapor diminishes. This decrease
in vapor capacity takes place In a
block of moist air as it rises into the
cooler upper regions, and if 1t rises
high enough to cool to the critical
point, it simply drops part of its vapor
load.
Then the Rain Falls.
AS more and more droplets gather,
they form great misty mass thick
and dense enough to obscure the sky
When water-vapor particles condense
into water droplets, whether on their
rise from the sea or after numerous
cloud-making adventures, they not
only grasp their nearest fellow mole
cules, but they must find infnitesimal