(04-08-2024, 02:03 PM)Michigan Swamp Buck Wrote: So, a drop in air temperature causes a decrease in air pressure? The colder mass of air, heavier than the warmer air around it, causes reduced air pressure under its weight, or are you actually referring to a temperature inversion? I'm not a weather expert, but I thought that a hot air balloon rises because the hot air is pushed up by the higher pressure (or weight) of the cold air around it.
Please explain, I am perplexed.
One difference with a ht air balloon is that all of the air molecules are trapped, and have to move as unit rather than freely flowing as a breeze. But it, too, seeks to fill the lower pressure of the colder air above it, which causes it to rise like a bubble of air.
The same effect can be seen when a storm rides in and the wind kicks up - it's a function of the difference in the air pressures at play between the ambient air where you are and the air under the storm coming in. You feel a cold breeze coming FROM the storm, but that's because that cold air is being displaced and pushed out by the warmer air rushing INTO the storm trying to restore pressure equilibrium..
Different folks will see "flow" differently, and explain it differently. For example, electronic technicians have a different view of electrical flow from electronic engineers. Technicians say that electricity is the flow of electrons, from positive to negative, while engineers say it's the flow of electron HOLES, from negative to positive. But in both cases, the electricity is really flowing the same way.
When I was studying electronics in trade school in high school, it really warped my head a bit to get that understood. Made for some bad marks in the first semester or so while I was figuring it out and get it understood. Logic told me that if I grabbed a hot wire, I was in for a worse day than if I just grabbed a ground wire, and it seemed to me that the engineers had it all backwards,,, but that is the theory of electricity they use to develop circuitry, and it seems to work all the same, whichever view of flow one takes.
BUT - even after all these years, I think it's still a bad idea to grab the positive wire and get all the electron holes sucked right out of ya!
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We've got cloud cover and some rain drops here, not much eclipse. A few minutes ago I saw about a quarter of the sun gone during a break in the clouds.
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