[Donald Cooper]

As a round-earther, I always thought the flat-earth theory was a bunch of nonsense. However, after reading articles on this website I found my beliefs challenged. I have one question for round-earthers. We say that the oceans are held to a spherical earth by gravity, but how do we explain clouds being suspended in the air? Wouldn't gravity work equally on clouds since they are also water? Clouds are denser and heavier than air, therefore they should not be able to stay suspended in mid-air according to the round-earth theory.

[MattyWS]

if the earth were flat, how would your question differ?

Also the clouds do indeed fall back to earth, in the form of rain/snow/hail once the droplets/ice have formed. For a clearer idea though I'd take a look here;

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud

Clouds are not heavy. The water in a cloud can have a mass of several million tons. Every cubic metre (m3) of the cloud has only about 5 grams of water in it. Cloud droplets are also about 1000 times heavier than evaporated water, so they are much heavier than air. They do not fall, but stay in the air, because there is warm air all round the heavier water droplets. When water changes from gas to droplets, this makes heat. Because the droplets are very small, they "stick" to the warm air.

[RonJ]

Clouds are just fog only higher in the sky.  A pilot can climb up thru a layer of clouds just like a bus driver can drive thru the fog.  The 'chem trails' are just nothing but clouds formed by rapidly moving aircraft. 
 

[LoveScience]

Take the size of a typical water droplet that forms a cloud. Extremely small. With so little mass, air resistance becomes significant and therefore balances out the downward force due to gravity. Now take a very small region with in a cloud and instabilities caused by various factors including differences in temperature, air pressure etc cause adjacent droplets to stick together grow into a larger droplet. With the increased mass of several combined droplets there is enough weight to cause it to fall. Now consider this happening throughout the cloud and we get rain.  Simples...

[Donald Cooper]

Take the size of a typical water droplet that forms a cloud. Extremely small. With so little mass, air resistance becomes significant and therefore balances out the downward force due to gravity. Now take a very small region with in a cloud and instabilities caused by various factors including differences in temperature, air pressure etc cause adjacent droplets to stick together grow into a larger droplet. With the increased mass of several combined droplets there is enough weight to cause it to fall. Now consider this happening throughout the cloud and we get rain.  Simples...

your theory proves nothing...

[RonJ]

The upward movement of air itself can hold stuff airborne.  Just try to fly thru a thunderstorm and you will quickly realize that your aircraft can easily get sucked up thousands of feet and then just as quickly get thrown back down.  Hail stones get bigger on every up & down cycle until they are so heavy that they fall to the ground.  Look at a cumulonimbus cloud.  Vertical air currents carry the water vapor higher & higher into the sky.  If you find yourself in a tornado you & your whole car can be sucked up and carried aloft for quite a distance before coming back to earth.  Never underestimate what strong air currents can do even to heavier objects.  Just think of what they can do to something so small and light as a molecule of water.

[LoveScience]

your theory proves nothing...

Not a theory Donald its a fact. Any meteorologist will say the same.

If something is light enough then air resistance becomes significant. Tiny water droplets become suspended in the air because air resistance matches the pull of gravity. Snowflakes are less dense than water droplets and so they are affected more air resistance - hence their random paths down to the ground.

[AATW]

It seems Donald has never seen mist - which is just a cloud at ground level.
Or been in a hot shower where the bathroom mists up.
In both cases you can see the mist of water droplets and you can see that they are in suspension in the air, not falling.
As someone said above, when the droplets do combine and get too heavy then they do fall. It's called rain.

[juner]

your theory proves nothing...

Refrain from low-content posting in the upper fora. Warned.

[Donald Cooper]

I never once said that clouds don't exist or that there's not steam when I have a hot shower. However, if gravity can hold trillions of tons of water (the oceans) to the earth, why can't it contain a few water droplets floating in the air? And if you're going to tell me that air currents, like a tornado hold the clouds up in the air, you're mistaken. Anyone can see that clouds are not constantly being thrown around by air currents, but move in a peaceful manner. And if you're saying that an air current can hold up a water molecule but when it forms into a water droplet (rain) it is now too heavy for this tornado-like air current that can throw a plane around and lift a car off the ground, you're also mistaken. The fact that clouds float, even the fact that mist or fog is floating slightly off the ground disproves gravity.

[markjo]

And if you're going to tell me that air currents, like a tornado hold the clouds up in the air, you're mistaken. Anyone can see that clouds are not constantly being thrown around by air currents, but move in a peaceful manner.

I don't think that clouds float as peacefully as you think.

And if you're saying that an air current can hold up a water molecule but when it forms into a water droplet (rain) it is now too heavy for this tornado-like air current that can throw a plane around and lift a car off the ground, you're also mistaken. The fact that clouds float, even the fact that mist or fog is floating slightly off the ground disproves gravity.

Think it through.  Size matters.  How much does a car weigh and how much does a cloud droplet weigh?  How much energy do you think that it takes to throw a car around and how much energy do you think that it should take to support a cloud droplet?

[MattyWS]

I never once said that clouds don't exist or that there's not steam when I have a hot shower. However, if gravity can hold trillions of tons of water (the oceans) to the earth, why can't it contain a few water droplets floating in the air? And if you're going to tell me that air currents, like a tornado hold the clouds up in the air, you're mistaken. Anyone can see that clouds are not constantly being thrown around by air currents, but move in a peaceful manner. And if you're saying that an air current can hold up a water molecule but when it forms into a water droplet (rain) it is now too heavy for this tornado-like air current that can throw a plane around and lift a car off the ground, you're also mistaken. The fact that clouds float, even the fact that mist or fog is floating slightly off the ground disproves gravity.

Did you read the link I sent in the second post? Clouds are not heavy, the warm air that hold the clouds up is a stronger force than the gravitational force on the individual droplets of water, until those droplets form together to make larger droplets at which point, yes, gravity wins and the water falls back down to earth. That's what rain is.

[AATW]

I never once said that clouds don't exist or that there's not steam when I have a hot shower.

Steam is not actually visible. What you're seeing in your bathroom is mist. What do you think mist is made of and why doesn't it fall to earth?
Is there a tornado in your bathroom holding up the water droplets?
For something to move a force has to be acting on it. There is a force acting on me, and you, and everything else: gravity.
You jump off something, you fall.
So why does your bathroom mist up? Why don't all the tiny water droplets which mist is made up from just fall to earth? Because other forces are working on them from air currents.
You don't need a tornado to lift them, that's houses you're thinking of. For very small, light objects you don't need a huge air current to keep them afloat. The smaller mass the object is the less force is needed to move it. More details here:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-do-clouds-float-when/

Note that a cloud isn't a "thing", it's a collection of billions and billions of things. The combined mass of all of them is not so relevant as the mass of each tiny water droplet and the density of them.

[Fig Newton]

Yup, you can't just say that gravity can hold down millions of tons of water so it should be able to work on clouds. It comes down to how much stuff (mass) there is at any given point (per unit volume). The density of water is 997 kg/m^3. The density of a cloud will vary but you won't see it much over 20 grams/m^3. So it's a lot easier for other forces to work against the gravity.

Edit: Sorry, I made a mistake. The average moisture content of a cubic meter of air is generally 20 grams or less. As you reach 100 percent humidity water starts condensing out to form a cloud and will eventually fall as raindrops. So on average, the density of a cloud is much less than the water content of the air around that cloud.

[Curiosity File]

Many factors involved in cloud formation, variables and what keeps them aloft until rain drops form within them then fall to the earth.
Factors include Air pressure, air temperatures, humidity levels, condensing of humidity, air flow, solar radiation, land or surface temperatures, changing temperatures from surface to top of cloud formation and more.
Clouds in no way disprove gravity, nor do they completely disprove "Universal Acceleration" in FET, at least not with the model with a sealed dome over the earth. But that a subject for another discussion.

Air flow alone has a huge effect on many objects. When you look at how little of air flow can keep a feather or piece of paper aloft you get some perspective.
Try tearing up several sheets of paper, point a small fan upward set on low, then release the paper in front of the fan and note how they easily float upward. Turn the fa off and they fall to the earth.
Fill a balloon with hot are and it rises, blow at it and it will move the direction you blow even upward.

There is always humidity in the air even on a hot summer day. You can only see this humidity when it condenses enough that light reflects off it. Only when the humidity condenses enough to become liquid droplets large and heavy enough that the other factors have little effect on them do the succumb to the forces of gravity.

For an example of varying temperature layers from ground to clouds is 'Ice Rain'.
This phenomena occurs when the humidity condenses into droplets in the clouds where the temps are above freezing at that altitude, begins to descend, passes through a layer of air that's below freezing forming frozen cylinder shaped ice pellets that hit the ground in that form even when the ground temps are above freezing. I see this a lot in the mountains where I live.
Also I have experienced being in the clouds where you can see multiple levels of condensed  water vapor simultaneously in the form of fog, wet fog and even small water droplets that hang in the air and get you soaking wet without fall in the form off rain. Just walking through it or the win blowing it on you.

Even snow flakes you can watch the wind blow them all direction but when the wind stops they fall to the ground.
       
   
         

[Spingo]

As a round-earther, I always thought the flat-earth theory was a bunch of nonsense. However, after reading articles on this website I found my beliefs challenged. I have one question for round-earthers. We say that the oceans are held to a spherical earth by gravity, but how do we explain clouds being suspended in the air? Wouldn't gravity work equally on clouds since they are also water? Clouds are denser and heavier than air, therefore they should not be able to stay suspended in mid-air according to the round-earth theory.

Clouds are not denser than air, neither are the heavier. Have you ever watched a kettle boil?  or watched a wet road steam as it’s heated by the sun?  Have you ever seen clouds form over a forest?
It’s no mystery it’s the water cycle in a action. The fact that clouds float is perfectly in line with science. Your making something out of nothing while at the same time demonstrating how a lack of knowledge and understanding about a subject can cause people, like yourself to start believing in things which really don’t make sense.
Thane your post for example you start off making two statements that aren’t true that lead you to a false conclusion.