Inside the Dramatic Dance of Raindrops
The real dance is in the beautiful fluid movement of the droplet shapes. When two drops collide, the water pulses and curls until the shape settles down. But the new combined droplet may also shatter immediately, sometimes stretching out into a sheet before bursting into a shower of tiny droplets. The cycle repeats itself—catch-up and coalesce, catch-up and break—on and on until the drops reach the ground. The harder the rain, the more often droplets bump into each other and the more frantic the dance.