Fog often arises from a gentle mixing of air. Some of the air will be warmer and with more vapor, while other air is cooler and with less vapor. In wet areas near the ground, as well as over water, the vapor is often near saturation for its temperature (i.e., near 100% humidity). When near-saturated […]
A Thin Fog Early This Morning Read More »
It seems like it should be a law of nature: reflections of a source cannot be brighter than the source itself. How could it be otherwise? To be otherwise would imply that the object somehow amplifies the light, which is impossible. And yet, there are situations that seem to bend this obvious “law”. If you
Lightened reflections on rippled water Read More »
The name is descriptive yet misleading. The colored edges of some clouds indeed look a lot like the colored interference colors in a soap or oil film, which is what physicists call iridescence. Yet in the cloud case, the effect is due to a slightly different phenomenon—diffraction. The diffraction occurs around many tiny cloud droplets.