MTU physicists make a splash with rain discovery

By Jennifer Donovan, MTU public relations director

HOUGHTON -- It's conventional wisdom in atmospheric science circles: large raindrops fall faster than smaller drops because they're bigger and heavier. And no raindrop can fall faster than its "terminal speed"-- its speed when the downward force of gravity is exactly the same as the upward air resistance.

Now two physicists from Michigan Tech University and colleagues at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (National University of Mexico) have discovered that it ain't necessarily so.

Some smaller raindrops can fall faster than bigger ones. In fact, they can fall faster than their terminal speed. In other words, they can fall faster than drops of that size and weight are supposed to be able to fall.

And that could mean that the weatherman has been overestimating how much it rains.

Read more in the June 11, 2009, issue of Tech Today ...