What makes it rain? Rain falls from clouds for the same reason anything falls to Earth. The Earth’s gravity pulls it. But every cloud is made of water droplets or ice crystals. Why doesn’t rain or snow fall constantly from all clouds? The droplets or ice crystals in clouds are exceedingly small. The effect or gravity on them is minute. Air currents move and lift droplets so that the net downward displacement is zero, even though the droplets are in constant motion.
Droplets and ice crystals behave somewhat like dust in the air made visible in a shaft of sunlight. To the casual observer, dust seems to act in a totally random fashion, moving about chaotically without fixed direction. But in fact dust particles are much larger than water droplets and they finally fall. The average size of a cloud droplet is only 0.0004 inch in diameter. It is so small that it would take sixteen hours to fall half a mile in perfectly still air, and it does not fall out of moving air at all. Only when the droplet grows to diameter of 0.008 inch or larger can it fall from the cloud. The average raindrop contains a million times as much water as a tiny cloud droplet. The growth of a cloud droplet to a size large enough to fall out is the cause of rain and other forms of precipitation. This important growth process is called "coalescence.
23. What is the main topic of the passage?
(A) The mechanics of rain
(B) The weather patterns of North America
(C) How Earth s gravity affects agriculture
(D) Types of clouds
24.The word "minute in line 4 is closest in meaning to which of the following?
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