Water – Fun Facts and Physics

• There are nominally 75,708.24 drops of water per gallon, depending on surface tension.
• A drop of water is nominally 1/96th a teaspoon or 0.05 milliliters.
• Drop defined: noun – a small quantity of liquid that falls or is produced in a more or less spherical mass; a liquid globule
• Droplet defined: noun – a little drop
• Aerosol defined: noun – a system of colloidal particles dispersed in a gas; smoke or fog
• Colloid defined: noun – a substance made up of a system of particles with linear dimensions in the range of about 10^-7 to 5 × 10^-5 cm dispersed in a continuous gaseous, liquid, or solid medium whose properties depend on the large specific surface area. The particles can be large molecules like proteins, or solid, liquid, or gaseous aggregates and they remain dispersed indefinitely.
• Water has three physical states
  • Solid (ice)
  • Liquid (water)
  • Gas (water vapor)

The appropriate word for the drops that a person expectorates is spit. To spit means to expel saliva from the mouth. Human spittle may also be phlegm (the mucus in the nose, mouth, and throat, esp. that appearing in the lungs and throat passages when a person has a cold).

The cigarette smoke rising from the burning cigarettes has a blueish color. The exhaled smoke has a white color. When the smoke particles remain in the lungs a brief time, they become enveloped in water vapor — aerosols that reflect all light thereby appearing white to the observer.

The smoke and the smoke enveloped in water vapor are both lighter than air and take flight. Aerosols are not ‘droplets’ because they do not drop.

Compare air movement in both videos.

Visible droplets are heavier than air and are products of the mucosa (mucus membranes) that form a protective barrier on all surfaces of the human body that are exposed to foreign particles and germs. The body expels ear wax, saliva, tears, mucous of the bronchial tubes , larynx, sinus, and lung tissue coating, and phlegm which can be viewed as droplets. The key to the action of droplets is found in the first four letters of the word; d, r, o, p. The droplets — phlegm — drop down. Not up.

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