RAIN AND WIRELESS

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 260, 3 August 1928, Page 16

RAIN AND WIRELESS

From time to time new explanations are put forward to account for heavy or long continued rainfall, and one which has enjoyed great favour is wireless. With all this electricity about, say the unthinking, no wonder we have had such a wet winter! (states “My Magazine”). People who think a little longer or a little further back can see that this explanation will not do. The wettest summer in the 19th century was in 1879, before there were even telephones in any great number, and not many people used electric bells. The rain that raineth every day was known to Shakespeare, who n< doubt lived through a number of very wet years and very dry ones as well. Nevertheless, there are other believers whose .little knowledge of science is a dangerous thing, and who can find an electrical explanation which is a little more advanced. It is well known that a discharge of electricity will cause droplets of water vapour to cling together otto cohere. That is one of the reasons why raindrops are so large in a thunderstorm. Also the fact that droplets of vapour will condense into moisture when charged with electricity can be shown on a small scale in the laboratory. Therefore, say these reasoners, it seems possible that when every wireless station in Europe is radiating away electric energy some of it causes the vapour particles' iu the clouds to coalesce and fall as rain. So far from being possible, or even probable, it is impossible. All the electric energy dissipated by all the wireless stations of the world would not be enough to start one shower. In every raindrop are 8,000,000 cloud droplets. In order that rain may fall the clouds from which they come have to be lifted by rising currents of air. The work could not be done by the biggest power station that supplies electric light and electric trains to the largest of the world’s cities. Millions of horse-power are expended in producinng a shower. Lastly. 16,000,000 tons of waler fall every second as rain on the earth. The efforts of a wireless station Io interfere with ur alter this tremendous hydraulic engine can only be compared Io striking u match in Hyde Park. Wiriless c.'in neither slop rain nor bring it on; and all Ihe electric power employed Io rim all I'm Iraiim ;iii.| trains in the world would be equally powerless to per form th'' miracle. . . .