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Rain
Posted By: Wes, on host 204.215.203.233
Date: Saturday, August 18, 2001, at 15:08:41

Yesterday morning I was looking out the window of the passenger's seat of my friend's car. It was raining lightly. As we drove, some of the rain from the windshield rolled over to my window. Once there it rolled towards the back end of the window, but arched down and dropped off the bottom of the window before it got there. This may seem like a trivial every day thing, and it is, but it's still amazing. If you think of all the interactions that need to take place to make that simple demonstration of physics possible, it's overwhelming. The polarity of the water, allowing it to stay in drops and stay on the window... The invisible force of gravity pulling it downwards... The (insert mind bogglingly high number) atoms in each drop of water being held apart from the (insert mind bogglingly high number) atoms of the glass... The 6.0225 × 10^23 atoms in each 22.4 liters of air, pushing against the water atoms, causing them to move backwards... The light refracting through the water, making things I see through them distorted, since the light takes time to be transfered through every atom on the way to my eye... The insane workings of all of those atoms, which are technically about 99.999% empty space... The fact that all of this is made of energy, including myself, and that energy has become a state in which it can appreciate how amazing it is... And millions of other things, all interacting perfectly and invisibly, just so a rain drop can roll across the window of my friend's car.

Wes

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