What do you see?
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We’ve all played the “what does that cloud look like” game. Maybe you saw a bunny… or an airplane… or a unicorn. What if that same cloud could also be seen by someone in a far off continent? That’s what a listener in Minnesota wondered. He wanted to know if the same cloud he saw in a park near his house could also be seen in Africa.
We talk to Deanna Hence, one of our favorite weather experts, and she tells us about how clouds travel. We also dust off the Zoom Ray to learn about what is inside of a cloud. And have you ever noticed the similarities between cloud types, like cumulonimbus, and magic spells from Harry Potter? Well, we have, and we made a game out of it!
We also have a brand new Mystery Sound for your guessing pleasure and a Moment of Um that answers the question: Why do pugs have such scrunchy faces?
Audio Transcript
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ZACH: You're listening to Brains On where we're serious about being curious.
SPEAKER 1: Brains On is supported in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation.
BOB: [SIGH] I love lying on the grass and watching the clouds. Thanks for inviting me, Menaka and Sanden.
MENAKA WILHELM: Of course, Bob.
SANDEN TOTTEN: Yeah. Oh, hey. That one, that one looks like a mouse slam dunking a basketball. Oh, and over there, that looks like a pineapple with legs. What do you see in the clouds, Bob and Menaka?
BOB: Hmm. Well, that one looks like a cloud.
MENAKA WILHELM: Yeah, but Bob, they are clouds.
SANDEN TOTTEN: Yeah. Of course, they all look like clouds. Oh, he's totally right.
MENAKA WILHELM: Oh, you're right. That is a very cloud-looking cloud.
SANDEN TOTTEN: Classic cloud.
BOB: The cloudiest cloud that ever clouded.
SANDEN TOTTEN: Mm-hmm. Totally. What do you see, Menaka?
MENAKA WILHELM: Well, you know, I don't think clouds look like things so much as feelings.
BOB: What do you mean?
MENAKA WILHELM: OK, so like, that fluffy one over there?
BOB: Yeah?
MENAKA WILHELM: That's the feeling of snuggling in a blanket on a cold day. And that wispy one? That's the feeling of sniffing a rose.
SANDEN TOTTEN: Wow, I kind of see what you mean.
MENAKA WILHELM: Yeah. And that one coming toward us? That's the feeling you get when you hear our theme song.
SANDEN TOTTEN: Huh, hearing our theme song? What does that even feel like?
MENAKA WILHELM: You know, it's kind of like-- well, it's like this.
[THEME MUSIC]
MOLLY BLOOM: You're listening to Brains On from American Public Media. I'm Molly Bloom. And my co-host today is Zach from Chaska, Minnesota. Hi, Zach
ZACH: Hi, Molly.
MOLLY BLOOM: Well, we've got our heads in the clouds today thanks to a question that you sent to us. What was that question?
ZACH: I wanted to know if I see a cloud here in Minnesota, will eventually maybe someone in Africa see it?
MOLLY BLOOM: I love that question. We see clouds all the time, but we don't often stop and think about where they've been and where they're going. So Zach, what got you thinking about this?
ZACH: I think, like, I was just like at my school park, and I was looking up at the clouds making shapes with my mom. And then I was like, if I see like that cloud, could someone like eventually in Africa see it? And I think in Africa motivated me because I'm pretty sure at that time we were learning about Africa.
MOLLY BLOOM: Very cool. So what do you think of when you see clouds?
ZACH: Um, I think of, like, little water droplets?
MOLLY BLOOM: What kind of cloud is your favorite?
ZACH: My favorite clouds are all, like, those big fluffy clouds, like, you see them at the bottom, but then when they sort of clear out, you see the top of them.
MOLLY BLOOM: Mm.
ZACH: What is, like, just about the same size but it looks smaller because it's way higher up.
MOLLY BLOOM: Interesting. So what do you do when you look at clouds? Do you think of what they look like? Or do you just like to look at them?
ZACH: I remember one time, like it was a white fluffy cloud day, and I saw this one gray cloud that looked like a unicorn.
MOLLY BLOOM: Ooh, so do you like when it's kind of a gray cloudy day?
ZACH: Uh, yeah because I know that usually means rain. And that usually means puddles, and that usually means worms, to ask you, and I can put them in my mom's garden.
MOLLY BLOOM: That is a great chain of events. Rain means puddles means worms means garden helpers. So if you could ask a cloud a question, what would you ask it?
ZACH: I would ask it if it could go to Antarctica and bring me a baby penguin.
MOLLY BLOOM: [LAUGHS] A cloud delivery service. I like it.
ZACH: Yeah.
[WIND BLOWING]
MOLLY BLOOM: Well, let's start by getting to know clouds a little better. What are they exactly?
ZACH: Sometimes they look like fluffy cotton candy.
MOLLY BLOOM: Or maybe a tuft of gray hair.
ZACH: Or even a heaping scoop of whipped cream.
MOLLY BLOOM: But what they really are is water. Let's take a closer look with our handy dandy zoom ray.
[ZOOMING IN]
When you zoom in on the air around us, you'll see there's tiny bits of water floating all around. This water is a gas called water vapor, but it's too small for us to see with our eyes.
ZACH: Unless you have a zoom ray.
MOLLY BLOOM: Which we do. So this vapor makes the air humid, but it isn't a cloud yet. When that vapor climbs higher into the sky, it starts to cool down.
ZACH: Because the higher you go in the sky, the colder it gets.
MOLLY BLOOM: So when that invisible water gas gets cool enough, it starts to form water droplets or sometimes tiny ice crystals. Usually, it does that by grabbing on to something like dust, or ash, or even floating bacteria. Let's zoom in on some water vapor and watch.
[ZOOMING IN]
WATER VAPOR 1: Brrr. Is it just me, or is it getting cold up here?
WATER VAPOR 2: Oh, totally cold, my watery friend. I feel my energy slowing down. I need to sit.
WATER VAPOR 1: Samesies. Hey, look, a piece of sky dust.
WATER VAPOR 2: A perfect seat for a pair of water vapor pals.
[WATER DROPS]
WATER VAPOR 1: [CHUCKLES] That's better.
WATER VAPOR 3: Hey, water friends. It's me, more water. That dust seat looks nice. Can I join you?
WATER VAPOR 2: Be my guest.
MOLLY BLOOM: As water in the sky collects on these microscopic things, it starts to form droplets. This is called condensation.
WATER VAPOR 4: Ooh, a sitting party. Move over. This water pal is coming in for a landing.
WATER VAPOR 5: Oh. Can I, another friendly particle of water, join you all too?
WATER VAPOR 1: Hmm. This droplet is getting pretty packed with pals.
WATER VAPOR 2: Yeah. Why not sit on that dust over there?
WATER VAPOR 5: Excellent idea, chums. I shall. Look, I'm starting my own droplet now.
WATER VAPORS: Yay!
ZACH: If enough water droplets form in the same area, they'll make a cloud.
MOLLY BLOOM: The same thing can happen when water vapor lands on something and suddenly freezes. In that case, the cloud is made of ice crystals instead of water droplets. And clouds often look white because those water droplets scatter all the colors in sunlight equally.
ZACH: And since sunlight is white, clouds look white too.
MOLLY BLOOM: When clouds get thicker, less light gets through, making them look gray.
ZACH: But either way, you can think of a cloud as a giant stadium of water particles just having a sitting party together.
WATER VAPOR 2: Oh, boy, there sure are a lot of us around here now. It's a crowd!
WATER VAPOR 1: No, it's a cloud! [LAUGHS]
WATER VAPOR 2: Ah, you crack me up. No wonder we're friends.
WATER VAPOR 1: I know. [CHUCKLES]
WATER VAPOR 2: Hey, let's do the wave because we're water. Get it?
WATER VAPOR 1: The wave? [LAUGHS] H2-- oh no you didn't!
[BOTH LAUGH]
You're so funny, cloud friend.
ZACH: By the way, despite what you might see in cartoons, you can't sit on a cloud. They only look solid from far away.
MOLLY BLOOM: Up close, they look like mist. In fact, fog is pretty much just a cloud at ground level. So those are the basics of cloud formation. Let's zoom out and get back to the studio.
ZACH: Into our chairs. Suddenly, I really want to sit on something.
[ZOOMING OUT]
MOLLY BLOOM: OK. Now that we're all caught up on clouds, let's get to your question about how they travel. We pitched this one to one of our favorite weather watchers.
DEANNA HENCE: Well, I think this is a really, really great question. I'm Deanna Hence, and I'm an assistant professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
MOLLY BLOOM: Deanna studies clouds and how they form weather patterns. So Zach, she actually had two answers to your question about whether a cloud you see in Minnesota could travel to Africa. The first answer is about how far a single cloud can travel. Are you ready to hear about that, Zach?
ZACH: Yep.
MOLLY BLOOM: OK. Let's see what Deanna has to say.
DEANNA HENCE: So if we think about just a single cloud, probably the easiest one to think about is a thunderstorm because those things get very big and tall, and they grow up into the atmosphere. And they have the bottom part, which you see all the rain and lightning coming out. But at the very, very top, you'll see that the thunderstorm spreads out and gets rather thin. And we call this an anvil cloud because it looks like an anvil that a blacksmith would use. Right? To pound out a sword or something.
[ANVIL POUNDS]
MOLLY BLOOM: The anvils are, like, a lot of times in cartoons too. They're the big black metal things that maybe like Wile E. Coyote is trying to drop on the Road Runner. Well, Deanna says, if you saw a thunder cloud from the side, it would kind of have that shape-- a wide base, narrower in the middle, and then spreading out really wide at the top.
DEANNA HENCE: And the reason why is because that cloud is actually hitting the top of the lowest part of our atmosphere. And so we can't go any higher than that, so it just spreads out up there instead.
MOLLY BLOOM: You can think of it like a ceiling for weather. When the clouds spread out against this atmospheric ceiling, they become really thin and wispy. These are called cirrus clouds, and they can travel pretty far from the thunderstorm that grew them.
DEANNA HENCE: It's almost like if the cloud was spewing off a ton of glitter, and glitter was traveling wave away from where the original glitter gun was shooting it upward. Right? And they typically can last about up to a thousand kilometers.
So even though that cloud may not make it to, say, Africa, if you were standing on the beach on the East Coast, say in South Carolina, that thin, wispy cloud could possibly make it all the way to Bermuda, which is kind of in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, and say hello to the folks on that lovely island there.
MOLLY BLOOM: So imagine a thunderstorm's shooting off wispy white darts that float far away from the storm that made them. Those darts might go hundreds of miles, not quite from Minnesota to Africa but still pretty impressive.
ROBOTIC VOICE: Brains, Brains, Brains On.
MOLLY BLOOM: We're going to hear some more thoughts Deanna has about how far clouds can travel. But first, something else that has traveled far and wide, it's time for the--
SPEAKER 2: (WHISPERING) Mystery sound.
MOLLY BLOOM: OK, you ready for this mystery sound, Zach?
ZACH: OK.
MOLLY BLOOM: Here it is.
[MYSTERY SOUND]
OK. It's super short, so we had to hear it a couple more times. Let's hear it, like, two more times before you guess.
[MYSTERY SOUND]
OK, one more time.
[MYSTERY SOUND]
All right. Zach, what could that sound possibly be?
ZACH: Um. I feel like I heard, like, a little metal clashing? So my guess would be like a fly swatter.
MOLLY BLOOM: Ooh.
ZACH: Like swatting something.
MOLLY BLOOM: Nice guess. Well, we're going to hear it again, and you will have another chance to guess in just a bit. And we're going to hear another answer to Zach's cloud query.
ZACH: Yeah! So stick around.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
MOLLY BLOOM: Here at Brains On, we've been answering your questions about the coronavirus for over a year now. This has been a tough and challenging year for everyone. But we hope that you've had some moments of joy too, and we'd like to hear about them. We're working on a new episode, and we'd like to hear about the things from this last year that have been a positive force in your life. Was it more time with your family? Maybe learning a new skill? Maybe you found the window in your house with the best view. Zach, what comes to mind for you?
ZACH: Um, I'm pretty sure I played Roblox on this computer.
MOLLY BLOOM: Nice. So you got some more video game time then?
ZACH: Yeah. And I think I also played Minecraft and wrestled my mom. We wrestle hard.
MOLLY BLOOM: [LAUGHS]
ZACH: [LAUGHS] Send us your answers by visiting brainson.org/contact.
MOLLY BLOOM: While you're there, you can send us drawings, ideas, mystery sounds, and questions like the one Jess from Carlsbad, California sent us. Jess wanted to know why do pugs have such scrunchy faces. We'll answer that at the end of the show during our Moment of Um, and we'll read the most recent group of listeners to be added to the Brains Honor Roll.
ZACH: So keep listening!
MOLLY BLOOM: You are listening to Brains On. I'm Molly.
ZACH: And I'm Zach.
MOLLY BLOOM: And this is the mystery sound. Here it is again.
[MYSTERY SOUND]
OK. Let's hear it, like, a couple more times.
[MYSTERY SOUND]
OK. So Zach, you were thinking fly swatter, which was a great guess. Do you have any new thoughts? Will you stick with fly swatter? What do you want to do?
ZACH: Um. I sort of have a new guess.
MOLLY BLOOM: OK. Let's hear it.
ZACH: Um, like when you're playing tennis, and you're like a really good player so you hit it hard, and it hits the net.
MOLLY BLOOM: Oh.
ZACH: Like sort of like that sound.
MOLLY BLOOM: Yeah. I understand what you're talking about. Do you want to hear the answer?
ZACH: Mm-hmm.
MOLLY BLOOM: All right. Here it is.
LOGAN: I'm Logan. I'm from Calgary, Alberta. That was the sound of me opening a new tennis can.
MOLLY BLOOM: Hey. That's kind of interesting. It was connected to tennis! Not the net but opening a new can of tennis balls. That is a really tricky sound. But good job getting close. I think you got real close.
SINGERS: Ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba. Brains On.
MOLLY BLOOM: Before we get back to the clouds and hear a second answer to your question, are you up for another game, a weather-themed game?
ZACH: Yeah.
MOLLY BLOOM: Great. I call it Potter or Pattern.
[MAGICAL MUSIC]
I'll give you a word, and you tell me if it's related to a weather pattern or Harry Potter.
ZACH: Uh, I barely know what Harry Potter. Like, there's one thing-- there are two things about Harry Potter I know. One, Harry Potter is in it. Two, magic is in it.
MOLLY BLOOM: [LAUGHS HYSTERICALLY]
ZACH: [GIGGLES] Those are the two things I know.
MOLLY BLOOM: Well, those are two great places to start. And you don't really need to know a lot about Harry Potter for this. You just kind of have to think if the word sounds like something related to magic or something related to weather.
ZACH: Um, I'm more scientific.
MOLLY BLOOM: OK, great. So maybe you'll recognize the weather ones. And then if you don't recognize it, you can kind of use process of elimination and say maybe that's Harry Potter. First one is cumulonimbus.
ZACH: Oh! That's a type of cloud. Weather.
[UPBEAT MUSIC]
MOLLY BLOOM: Yes, indeed. Very good. Cumulonimbus is a tall, dense, fluffy cloud.
ZACH: That's my favorite.
MOLLY BLOOM: It's a beautiful cloud. It's made by air currents carrying water vapor up into the sky. And for those who have heard Harry Potter, they might recognize that as well because Harry's broom that he rides is called the Nimbus 2000, so it's similar. All right. Zach, here's the next one. Capacious extremis.
ZACH: That, I'm pretty sure that's the spell.
[MAGICAL MUSIC]
MOLLY BLOOM: Correct. You've never even read it, but you know that is a spell. It's a spell Hermione used to make her purse hold way more than a normal purse should hold. Nice work. All right. Here's the next one. Acromantula.
ZACH: I'm going to say weather pattern.
[MAGICAL MUSIC]
MOLLY BLOOM: This one is a Harry Potter word. In the book, this is a species of giant spider. Like mantula kind of sounds like a tarantula.
ZACH: I knew it, but I was like, wait, acrobatics?
MOLLY BLOOM: You were questioning yourself. It was a good work. All right. Here is another one. Anvil crawlers.
ZACH: That's easy. Harry Potter.
[THUNDER]
MOLLY BLOOM: It's actually a weather pattern.
ZACH: What?
MOLLY BLOOM: Yeah! So this is a type of lightning where it looks like the bolts sort of are like, look, like a tree, and they go horizontally through a cloud. And if you didn't remember, she was just talking about how some clouds look like anvils? So anvil crawlers is a kind of lightning that kind of crawls through one of those clouds.
ZACH: Oh.
MOLLY BLOOM: Here is the next one cirrostratus.
ZACH: That's weather pattern.
[UPBEAT MUSIC]
MOLLY BLOOM: Yes, indeed. These are whitish, transparent clouds that cover the sky like a veil. Pretty cool. All right, last one. Sprites.
ZACH: Um. I'm going to say Harry Potter.
[UPBEAT MUSIC]
MOLLY BLOOM: You know what, you were going to be right either way because it's both. So in weather, sprites are a special kind of lightning that occurs above a thunderstorm. There are red bursts of light, super cool. And in Harry Potter, sprites are magical creatures that live in the water.
ZACH: In the water?
MOLLY BLOOM: Yeah!
ZACH: Yay! I love water.
MOLLY BLOOM: Nice work. For not having known Harry Potter, you did really well.
SPEAKER 3: Brains On, On, On.
MOLLY BLOOM: OK. You asked if a cloud could travel from the United States all the way to Africa. So we heard how far a single cloud might travel, which is somewhere in the middle of the ocean it could probably get to. But now let's ponder a cloud system. So do you know what a cloud system is, Zach?
ZACH: Uh, no.
MOLLY BLOOM: Yeah, so it's a group of clouds that move together to create a weather pattern. So for example, instead of one thunderstorm cloud, you could have a whole group of thunderstorm clouds. So here's Deanna Hence again.
DEANNA HENCE: So if you think about if you get a bunch of thunderstorms together, and they all get together and say, we're going to work together to do something really, really cool.
[GUITAR PLAYING]
They can start to group together and help form new thunderstorms. And some of them, maybe the older ones, kind of die away. But we have different thunderstorm systems that can travel very long distances.
MOLLY BLOOM: These cloud systems are very powerful and usually very dangerous. They include things like typhoons, derechos, and hurricanes. And they are super travelers.
DEANNA HENCE: You know, for example, a hurricane can get its start just off the coast of Africa. And that same hurricane can come travel all across the ocean and then come say hello to us over the course of about a week to week and a half. Now, a mid-latitude cyclone could maybe get its start, say, right next to the Rocky Mountains, say in Colorado.
And that same storm could travel all the way to the United Kingdom. So it goes to say hi to the queen of England maybe after about a week. So these kinds of cloud systems can travel all around the world. So I like to think of them as globetrotters. They really can go and see many, many parts of the world over a course of time.
MOLLY BLOOM: So in this case, imagine a parade of clouds marching and swirling together. Some may die out as they move, and others are born along the way. So these groups of clouds can go much, much farther than a single cloud can. But even these cloud systems will eventually die out when they run out of energy. For hurricanes, that typically happens when they reach land since they get their energy from the ocean.
So there you have it, Zach. Clouds can indeed travel pretty far when they're in a group, make it across the ocean. Does this change the way you think about clouds?
ZACH: Not really. I still think of them as big groups of water and cotton candy.
MOLLY BLOOM: Well, it sort of confirms what you were hoping, which is that you hoped they could travel really far. And it turns out, they can. So that's pretty cool.
KIDS: B-B-B-Brains On!
MOLLY BLOOM: Today we track clouds using satellites in space, but in the old days, people just watched the sky to see what was headed their way. And Deanna says we all share the same weather, and it brings us together.
DEANNA HENCE: One thing that I love to think about is that some of the earliest international collaboration in diplomacy was over the weather. It's when people really started realizing that, hey, that weather that's happening in this next country over is going to come to us, and then it's going to keep going. So it's really better if we all share our data so that we can all help each other know what's going on.
And so that's been going on since the middle of the 1800s. That's one of the most successful and long-going types of international cooperation that we've had in the history of the world. And I think that's really, really cool.
[THEME MUSIC]
MOLLY BLOOM: Clouds are collections of water droplets or ice crystals floating in the air.
ZACH: Thunderstorms can send out wispy clouds that can travel hundreds of miles from their source.
MOLLY BLOOM: And when clouds group together in a cloud system, they can go much further, across oceans even.
ZACH: Weather brings us together. And it is one of our earliest examples of countries sharing scientific data.
MOLLY BLOOM: That's it for this episode of Brains On.
ZACH: Brains On is produced by Sanden Totten, Marc Sanchez, Menaka Wilhelm, and Molly Bloom.
MOLLY BLOOM: We had production help from Ruby Guthrie and Christina Lopez, engineering help from Alex Simpson and Veronica Rodriguez. And special thanks to Julie Golla, Rosie duPont, Jack Silbernagel, and Naomi Cowan.
ZACH: And shout out to my teacher Emma Berglund. Brains On is a non-profit public radio program.
MOLLY BLOOM: You can support the show at brainson.org/fans. There you can find links to donate, or join our free fan club, or check out our new Brains On merch.
ZACH: We now have Brains On shirts, baseball hats, and face masks.
MOLLY BLOOM: And you can buy the Brains On book there too. That's brainson.org/fans.
ZACH: And now, before we go, it's time for our Moment of Um.
[CHORUS OF UMS]
MOLLY BLOOM: Today's Moment of Um was sent in by Jess who asks, why do pugs have such scrunchy faces?
[MUSIC PLAYING]
JEFF SCHOENEBECK: Pugs have squished faces because they have a slight difference in their DNA that makes the bones of the face not grow as far outwards as they would in a Great Dane. Hi. My name is Jeff Schoenebeck. I'm a researcher based at the University of Edinburgh over here in Scotland. I study animal genetics.
So why do dog breeds look different from one another? Well, I think it has a lot to do with back in time, it became popular, almost like a hobby, to breed dogs. A certain style of dog fitted certain families or had certain uses. And so what we think happened is maybe a couple hundred years ago, breeders were breeding pugs or some other breed of dog. And at some point, there is a change in DNA. And that affected how the face, the bones of the face took shape.
You know, I like to think, well, the breeder looked at these puppies, and these puppies had in a very, very flat face. And they really liked that look, and so they kept on breeding for it. And that way, they can kind of make a short face even shorter and shorter over time. There's some evidence that perhaps there's additional things that are going on in the skin to wrinkle it more as well. So that's what happens in pugs.
But then when we go over to another breed of dog like the bulldog, or we go to the Boston terrier or Brussels griffon, these are all different breeds of dogs that have short faces. The thing that we think is really the big player, the big change in the skeleton, the facial skeleton of these flat-faced breeds, almost all the breeds have the same change.
So that's really, really interesting because it means if you go somewhere back in time, these dogs are all related somehow to one another. And so there's a lot of history tying these dogs together, even though they look pretty different except for their squashed faces.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[CHORUS OF UMS]
MOLLY BLOOM: It's time for this list to evolve. It's the Brains Honor Roll. These are the incredible listeners who have sent in their questions, ideas, mystery sounds, drawings, and high fives.
[LISTING HONOR ROLL]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
We'll be back soon with more answers to your questions.
ZACH: Thanks for listening!
SPEAKER 1: Brains On is supported in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation.
BOB: [SIGH] I love lying on the grass and watching the clouds. Thanks for inviting me, Menaka and Sanden.
MENAKA WILHELM: Of course, Bob.
SANDEN TOTTEN: Yeah. Oh, hey. That one, that one looks like a mouse slam dunking a basketball. Oh, and over there, that looks like a pineapple with legs. What do you see in the clouds, Bob and Menaka?
BOB: Hmm. Well, that one looks like a cloud.
MENAKA WILHELM: Yeah, but Bob, they are clouds.
SANDEN TOTTEN: Yeah. Of course, they all look like clouds. Oh, he's totally right.
MENAKA WILHELM: Oh, you're right. That is a very cloud-looking cloud.
SANDEN TOTTEN: Classic cloud.
BOB: The cloudiest cloud that ever clouded.
SANDEN TOTTEN: Mm-hmm. Totally. What do you see, Menaka?
MENAKA WILHELM: Well, you know, I don't think clouds look like things so much as feelings.
BOB: What do you mean?
MENAKA WILHELM: OK, so like, that fluffy one over there?
BOB: Yeah?
MENAKA WILHELM: That's the feeling of snuggling in a blanket on a cold day. And that wispy one? That's the feeling of sniffing a rose.
SANDEN TOTTEN: Wow, I kind of see what you mean.
MENAKA WILHELM: Yeah. And that one coming toward us? That's the feeling you get when you hear our theme song.
SANDEN TOTTEN: Huh, hearing our theme song? What does that even feel like?
MENAKA WILHELM: You know, it's kind of like-- well, it's like this.
[THEME MUSIC]
MOLLY BLOOM: You're listening to Brains On from American Public Media. I'm Molly Bloom. And my co-host today is Zach from Chaska, Minnesota. Hi, Zach
ZACH: Hi, Molly.
MOLLY BLOOM: Well, we've got our heads in the clouds today thanks to a question that you sent to us. What was that question?
ZACH: I wanted to know if I see a cloud here in Minnesota, will eventually maybe someone in Africa see it?
MOLLY BLOOM: I love that question. We see clouds all the time, but we don't often stop and think about where they've been and where they're going. So Zach, what got you thinking about this?
ZACH: I think, like, I was just like at my school park, and I was looking up at the clouds making shapes with my mom. And then I was like, if I see like that cloud, could someone like eventually in Africa see it? And I think in Africa motivated me because I'm pretty sure at that time we were learning about Africa.
MOLLY BLOOM: Very cool. So what do you think of when you see clouds?
ZACH: Um, I think of, like, little water droplets?
MOLLY BLOOM: What kind of cloud is your favorite?
ZACH: My favorite clouds are all, like, those big fluffy clouds, like, you see them at the bottom, but then when they sort of clear out, you see the top of them.
MOLLY BLOOM: Mm.
ZACH: What is, like, just about the same size but it looks smaller because it's way higher up.
MOLLY BLOOM: Interesting. So what do you do when you look at clouds? Do you think of what they look like? Or do you just like to look at them?
ZACH: I remember one time, like it was a white fluffy cloud day, and I saw this one gray cloud that looked like a unicorn.
MOLLY BLOOM: Ooh, so do you like when it's kind of a gray cloudy day?
ZACH: Uh, yeah because I know that usually means rain. And that usually means puddles, and that usually means worms, to ask you, and I can put them in my mom's garden.
MOLLY BLOOM: That is a great chain of events. Rain means puddles means worms means garden helpers. So if you could ask a cloud a question, what would you ask it?
ZACH: I would ask it if it could go to Antarctica and bring me a baby penguin.
MOLLY BLOOM: [LAUGHS] A cloud delivery service. I like it.
ZACH: Yeah.
[WIND BLOWING]
MOLLY BLOOM: Well, let's start by getting to know clouds a little better. What are they exactly?
ZACH: Sometimes they look like fluffy cotton candy.
MOLLY BLOOM: Or maybe a tuft of gray hair.
ZACH: Or even a heaping scoop of whipped cream.
MOLLY BLOOM: But what they really are is water. Let's take a closer look with our handy dandy zoom ray.
[ZOOMING IN]
When you zoom in on the air around us, you'll see there's tiny bits of water floating all around. This water is a gas called water vapor, but it's too small for us to see with our eyes.
ZACH: Unless you have a zoom ray.
MOLLY BLOOM: Which we do. So this vapor makes the air humid, but it isn't a cloud yet. When that vapor climbs higher into the sky, it starts to cool down.
ZACH: Because the higher you go in the sky, the colder it gets.
MOLLY BLOOM: So when that invisible water gas gets cool enough, it starts to form water droplets or sometimes tiny ice crystals. Usually, it does that by grabbing on to something like dust, or ash, or even floating bacteria. Let's zoom in on some water vapor and watch.
[ZOOMING IN]
WATER VAPOR 1: Brrr. Is it just me, or is it getting cold up here?
WATER VAPOR 2: Oh, totally cold, my watery friend. I feel my energy slowing down. I need to sit.
WATER VAPOR 1: Samesies. Hey, look, a piece of sky dust.
WATER VAPOR 2: A perfect seat for a pair of water vapor pals.
[WATER DROPS]
WATER VAPOR 1: [CHUCKLES] That's better.
WATER VAPOR 3: Hey, water friends. It's me, more water. That dust seat looks nice. Can I join you?
WATER VAPOR 2: Be my guest.
MOLLY BLOOM: As water in the sky collects on these microscopic things, it starts to form droplets. This is called condensation.
WATER VAPOR 4: Ooh, a sitting party. Move over. This water pal is coming in for a landing.
WATER VAPOR 5: Oh. Can I, another friendly particle of water, join you all too?
WATER VAPOR 1: Hmm. This droplet is getting pretty packed with pals.
WATER VAPOR 2: Yeah. Why not sit on that dust over there?
WATER VAPOR 5: Excellent idea, chums. I shall. Look, I'm starting my own droplet now.
WATER VAPORS: Yay!
ZACH: If enough water droplets form in the same area, they'll make a cloud.
MOLLY BLOOM: The same thing can happen when water vapor lands on something and suddenly freezes. In that case, the cloud is made of ice crystals instead of water droplets. And clouds often look white because those water droplets scatter all the colors in sunlight equally.
ZACH: And since sunlight is white, clouds look white too.
MOLLY BLOOM: When clouds get thicker, less light gets through, making them look gray.
ZACH: But either way, you can think of a cloud as a giant stadium of water particles just having a sitting party together.
WATER VAPOR 2: Oh, boy, there sure are a lot of us around here now. It's a crowd!
WATER VAPOR 1: No, it's a cloud! [LAUGHS]
WATER VAPOR 2: Ah, you crack me up. No wonder we're friends.
WATER VAPOR 1: I know. [CHUCKLES]
WATER VAPOR 2: Hey, let's do the wave because we're water. Get it?
WATER VAPOR 1: The wave? [LAUGHS] H2-- oh no you didn't!
[BOTH LAUGH]
You're so funny, cloud friend.
ZACH: By the way, despite what you might see in cartoons, you can't sit on a cloud. They only look solid from far away.
MOLLY BLOOM: Up close, they look like mist. In fact, fog is pretty much just a cloud at ground level. So those are the basics of cloud formation. Let's zoom out and get back to the studio.
ZACH: Into our chairs. Suddenly, I really want to sit on something.
[ZOOMING OUT]
MOLLY BLOOM: OK. Now that we're all caught up on clouds, let's get to your question about how they travel. We pitched this one to one of our favorite weather watchers.
DEANNA HENCE: Well, I think this is a really, really great question. I'm Deanna Hence, and I'm an assistant professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
MOLLY BLOOM: Deanna studies clouds and how they form weather patterns. So Zach, she actually had two answers to your question about whether a cloud you see in Minnesota could travel to Africa. The first answer is about how far a single cloud can travel. Are you ready to hear about that, Zach?
ZACH: Yep.
MOLLY BLOOM: OK. Let's see what Deanna has to say.
DEANNA HENCE: So if we think about just a single cloud, probably the easiest one to think about is a thunderstorm because those things get very big and tall, and they grow up into the atmosphere. And they have the bottom part, which you see all the rain and lightning coming out. But at the very, very top, you'll see that the thunderstorm spreads out and gets rather thin. And we call this an anvil cloud because it looks like an anvil that a blacksmith would use. Right? To pound out a sword or something.
[ANVIL POUNDS]
MOLLY BLOOM: The anvils are, like, a lot of times in cartoons too. They're the big black metal things that maybe like Wile E. Coyote is trying to drop on the Road Runner. Well, Deanna says, if you saw a thunder cloud from the side, it would kind of have that shape-- a wide base, narrower in the middle, and then spreading out really wide at the top.
DEANNA HENCE: And the reason why is because that cloud is actually hitting the top of the lowest part of our atmosphere. And so we can't go any higher than that, so it just spreads out up there instead.
MOLLY BLOOM: You can think of it like a ceiling for weather. When the clouds spread out against this atmospheric ceiling, they become really thin and wispy. These are called cirrus clouds, and they can travel pretty far from the thunderstorm that grew them.
DEANNA HENCE: It's almost like if the cloud was spewing off a ton of glitter, and glitter was traveling wave away from where the original glitter gun was shooting it upward. Right? And they typically can last about up to a thousand kilometers.
So even though that cloud may not make it to, say, Africa, if you were standing on the beach on the East Coast, say in South Carolina, that thin, wispy cloud could possibly make it all the way to Bermuda, which is kind of in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, and say hello to the folks on that lovely island there.
MOLLY BLOOM: So imagine a thunderstorm's shooting off wispy white darts that float far away from the storm that made them. Those darts might go hundreds of miles, not quite from Minnesota to Africa but still pretty impressive.
ROBOTIC VOICE: Brains, Brains, Brains On.
MOLLY BLOOM: We're going to hear some more thoughts Deanna has about how far clouds can travel. But first, something else that has traveled far and wide, it's time for the--
SPEAKER 2: (WHISPERING) Mystery sound.
MOLLY BLOOM: OK, you ready for this mystery sound, Zach?
ZACH: OK.
MOLLY BLOOM: Here it is.
[MYSTERY SOUND]
OK. It's super short, so we had to hear it a couple more times. Let's hear it, like, two more times before you guess.
[MYSTERY SOUND]
OK, one more time.
[MYSTERY SOUND]
All right. Zach, what could that sound possibly be?
ZACH: Um. I feel like I heard, like, a little metal clashing? So my guess would be like a fly swatter.
MOLLY BLOOM: Ooh.
ZACH: Like swatting something.
MOLLY BLOOM: Nice guess. Well, we're going to hear it again, and you will have another chance to guess in just a bit. And we're going to hear another answer to Zach's cloud query.
ZACH: Yeah! So stick around.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
MOLLY BLOOM: Here at Brains On, we've been answering your questions about the coronavirus for over a year now. This has been a tough and challenging year for everyone. But we hope that you've had some moments of joy too, and we'd like to hear about them. We're working on a new episode, and we'd like to hear about the things from this last year that have been a positive force in your life. Was it more time with your family? Maybe learning a new skill? Maybe you found the window in your house with the best view. Zach, what comes to mind for you?
ZACH: Um, I'm pretty sure I played Roblox on this computer.
MOLLY BLOOM: Nice. So you got some more video game time then?
ZACH: Yeah. And I think I also played Minecraft and wrestled my mom. We wrestle hard.
MOLLY BLOOM: [LAUGHS]
ZACH: [LAUGHS] Send us your answers by visiting brainson.org/contact.
MOLLY BLOOM: While you're there, you can send us drawings, ideas, mystery sounds, and questions like the one Jess from Carlsbad, California sent us. Jess wanted to know why do pugs have such scrunchy faces. We'll answer that at the end of the show during our Moment of Um, and we'll read the most recent group of listeners to be added to the Brains Honor Roll.
ZACH: So keep listening!
MOLLY BLOOM: You are listening to Brains On. I'm Molly.
ZACH: And I'm Zach.
MOLLY BLOOM: And this is the mystery sound. Here it is again.
[MYSTERY SOUND]
OK. Let's hear it, like, a couple more times.
[MYSTERY SOUND]
OK. So Zach, you were thinking fly swatter, which was a great guess. Do you have any new thoughts? Will you stick with fly swatter? What do you want to do?
ZACH: Um. I sort of have a new guess.
MOLLY BLOOM: OK. Let's hear it.
ZACH: Um, like when you're playing tennis, and you're like a really good player so you hit it hard, and it hits the net.
MOLLY BLOOM: Oh.
ZACH: Like sort of like that sound.
MOLLY BLOOM: Yeah. I understand what you're talking about. Do you want to hear the answer?
ZACH: Mm-hmm.
MOLLY BLOOM: All right. Here it is.
LOGAN: I'm Logan. I'm from Calgary, Alberta. That was the sound of me opening a new tennis can.
MOLLY BLOOM: Hey. That's kind of interesting. It was connected to tennis! Not the net but opening a new can of tennis balls. That is a really tricky sound. But good job getting close. I think you got real close.
SINGERS: Ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba. Brains On.
MOLLY BLOOM: Before we get back to the clouds and hear a second answer to your question, are you up for another game, a weather-themed game?
ZACH: Yeah.
MOLLY BLOOM: Great. I call it Potter or Pattern.
[MAGICAL MUSIC]
I'll give you a word, and you tell me if it's related to a weather pattern or Harry Potter.
ZACH: Uh, I barely know what Harry Potter. Like, there's one thing-- there are two things about Harry Potter I know. One, Harry Potter is in it. Two, magic is in it.
MOLLY BLOOM: [LAUGHS HYSTERICALLY]
ZACH: [GIGGLES] Those are the two things I know.
MOLLY BLOOM: Well, those are two great places to start. And you don't really need to know a lot about Harry Potter for this. You just kind of have to think if the word sounds like something related to magic or something related to weather.
ZACH: Um, I'm more scientific.
MOLLY BLOOM: OK, great. So maybe you'll recognize the weather ones. And then if you don't recognize it, you can kind of use process of elimination and say maybe that's Harry Potter. First one is cumulonimbus.
ZACH: Oh! That's a type of cloud. Weather.
[UPBEAT MUSIC]
MOLLY BLOOM: Yes, indeed. Very good. Cumulonimbus is a tall, dense, fluffy cloud.
ZACH: That's my favorite.
MOLLY BLOOM: It's a beautiful cloud. It's made by air currents carrying water vapor up into the sky. And for those who have heard Harry Potter, they might recognize that as well because Harry's broom that he rides is called the Nimbus 2000, so it's similar. All right. Zach, here's the next one. Capacious extremis.
ZACH: That, I'm pretty sure that's the spell.
[MAGICAL MUSIC]
MOLLY BLOOM: Correct. You've never even read it, but you know that is a spell. It's a spell Hermione used to make her purse hold way more than a normal purse should hold. Nice work. All right. Here's the next one. Acromantula.
ZACH: I'm going to say weather pattern.
[MAGICAL MUSIC]
MOLLY BLOOM: This one is a Harry Potter word. In the book, this is a species of giant spider. Like mantula kind of sounds like a tarantula.
ZACH: I knew it, but I was like, wait, acrobatics?
MOLLY BLOOM: You were questioning yourself. It was a good work. All right. Here is another one. Anvil crawlers.
ZACH: That's easy. Harry Potter.
[THUNDER]
MOLLY BLOOM: It's actually a weather pattern.
ZACH: What?
MOLLY BLOOM: Yeah! So this is a type of lightning where it looks like the bolts sort of are like, look, like a tree, and they go horizontally through a cloud. And if you didn't remember, she was just talking about how some clouds look like anvils? So anvil crawlers is a kind of lightning that kind of crawls through one of those clouds.
ZACH: Oh.
MOLLY BLOOM: Here is the next one cirrostratus.
ZACH: That's weather pattern.
[UPBEAT MUSIC]
MOLLY BLOOM: Yes, indeed. These are whitish, transparent clouds that cover the sky like a veil. Pretty cool. All right, last one. Sprites.
ZACH: Um. I'm going to say Harry Potter.
[UPBEAT MUSIC]
MOLLY BLOOM: You know what, you were going to be right either way because it's both. So in weather, sprites are a special kind of lightning that occurs above a thunderstorm. There are red bursts of light, super cool. And in Harry Potter, sprites are magical creatures that live in the water.
ZACH: In the water?
MOLLY BLOOM: Yeah!
ZACH: Yay! I love water.
MOLLY BLOOM: Nice work. For not having known Harry Potter, you did really well.
SPEAKER 3: Brains On, On, On.
MOLLY BLOOM: OK. You asked if a cloud could travel from the United States all the way to Africa. So we heard how far a single cloud might travel, which is somewhere in the middle of the ocean it could probably get to. But now let's ponder a cloud system. So do you know what a cloud system is, Zach?
ZACH: Uh, no.
MOLLY BLOOM: Yeah, so it's a group of clouds that move together to create a weather pattern. So for example, instead of one thunderstorm cloud, you could have a whole group of thunderstorm clouds. So here's Deanna Hence again.
DEANNA HENCE: So if you think about if you get a bunch of thunderstorms together, and they all get together and say, we're going to work together to do something really, really cool.
[GUITAR PLAYING]
They can start to group together and help form new thunderstorms. And some of them, maybe the older ones, kind of die away. But we have different thunderstorm systems that can travel very long distances.
MOLLY BLOOM: These cloud systems are very powerful and usually very dangerous. They include things like typhoons, derechos, and hurricanes. And they are super travelers.
DEANNA HENCE: You know, for example, a hurricane can get its start just off the coast of Africa. And that same hurricane can come travel all across the ocean and then come say hello to us over the course of about a week to week and a half. Now, a mid-latitude cyclone could maybe get its start, say, right next to the Rocky Mountains, say in Colorado.
And that same storm could travel all the way to the United Kingdom. So it goes to say hi to the queen of England maybe after about a week. So these kinds of cloud systems can travel all around the world. So I like to think of them as globetrotters. They really can go and see many, many parts of the world over a course of time.
MOLLY BLOOM: So in this case, imagine a parade of clouds marching and swirling together. Some may die out as they move, and others are born along the way. So these groups of clouds can go much, much farther than a single cloud can. But even these cloud systems will eventually die out when they run out of energy. For hurricanes, that typically happens when they reach land since they get their energy from the ocean.
So there you have it, Zach. Clouds can indeed travel pretty far when they're in a group, make it across the ocean. Does this change the way you think about clouds?
ZACH: Not really. I still think of them as big groups of water and cotton candy.
MOLLY BLOOM: Well, it sort of confirms what you were hoping, which is that you hoped they could travel really far. And it turns out, they can. So that's pretty cool.
KIDS: B-B-B-Brains On!
MOLLY BLOOM: Today we track clouds using satellites in space, but in the old days, people just watched the sky to see what was headed their way. And Deanna says we all share the same weather, and it brings us together.
DEANNA HENCE: One thing that I love to think about is that some of the earliest international collaboration in diplomacy was over the weather. It's when people really started realizing that, hey, that weather that's happening in this next country over is going to come to us, and then it's going to keep going. So it's really better if we all share our data so that we can all help each other know what's going on.
And so that's been going on since the middle of the 1800s. That's one of the most successful and long-going types of international cooperation that we've had in the history of the world. And I think that's really, really cool.
[THEME MUSIC]
MOLLY BLOOM: Clouds are collections of water droplets or ice crystals floating in the air.
ZACH: Thunderstorms can send out wispy clouds that can travel hundreds of miles from their source.
MOLLY BLOOM: And when clouds group together in a cloud system, they can go much further, across oceans even.
ZACH: Weather brings us together. And it is one of our earliest examples of countries sharing scientific data.
MOLLY BLOOM: That's it for this episode of Brains On.
ZACH: Brains On is produced by Sanden Totten, Marc Sanchez, Menaka Wilhelm, and Molly Bloom.
MOLLY BLOOM: We had production help from Ruby Guthrie and Christina Lopez, engineering help from Alex Simpson and Veronica Rodriguez. And special thanks to Julie Golla, Rosie duPont, Jack Silbernagel, and Naomi Cowan.
ZACH: And shout out to my teacher Emma Berglund. Brains On is a non-profit public radio program.
MOLLY BLOOM: You can support the show at brainson.org/fans. There you can find links to donate, or join our free fan club, or check out our new Brains On merch.
ZACH: We now have Brains On shirts, baseball hats, and face masks.
MOLLY BLOOM: And you can buy the Brains On book there too. That's brainson.org/fans.
ZACH: And now, before we go, it's time for our Moment of Um.
[CHORUS OF UMS]
MOLLY BLOOM: Today's Moment of Um was sent in by Jess who asks, why do pugs have such scrunchy faces?
[MUSIC PLAYING]
JEFF SCHOENEBECK: Pugs have squished faces because they have a slight difference in their DNA that makes the bones of the face not grow as far outwards as they would in a Great Dane. Hi. My name is Jeff Schoenebeck. I'm a researcher based at the University of Edinburgh over here in Scotland. I study animal genetics.
So why do dog breeds look different from one another? Well, I think it has a lot to do with back in time, it became popular, almost like a hobby, to breed dogs. A certain style of dog fitted certain families or had certain uses. And so what we think happened is maybe a couple hundred years ago, breeders were breeding pugs or some other breed of dog. And at some point, there is a change in DNA. And that affected how the face, the bones of the face took shape.
You know, I like to think, well, the breeder looked at these puppies, and these puppies had in a very, very flat face. And they really liked that look, and so they kept on breeding for it. And that way, they can kind of make a short face even shorter and shorter over time. There's some evidence that perhaps there's additional things that are going on in the skin to wrinkle it more as well. So that's what happens in pugs.
But then when we go over to another breed of dog like the bulldog, or we go to the Boston terrier or Brussels griffon, these are all different breeds of dogs that have short faces. The thing that we think is really the big player, the big change in the skeleton, the facial skeleton of these flat-faced breeds, almost all the breeds have the same change.
So that's really, really interesting because it means if you go somewhere back in time, these dogs are all related somehow to one another. And so there's a lot of history tying these dogs together, even though they look pretty different except for their squashed faces.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[CHORUS OF UMS]
MOLLY BLOOM: It's time for this list to evolve. It's the Brains Honor Roll. These are the incredible listeners who have sent in their questions, ideas, mystery sounds, drawings, and high fives.
[LISTING HONOR ROLL]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
We'll be back soon with more answers to your questions.
ZACH: Thanks for listening!
Transcription services provided by 3Play Media.
