Sometimes you should not be too meticulous when analyzing the conditions of the puzzle, do complex calculations, study dictionaries and encyclopedias.
Sometimes puzzles can be built simply on beautiful images. For example, the question “what is a water mountain lighter than a feather” is most often chosen as the answer that corresponds to the ideas of weightless, soft, gentle, thin. What happens if all these romantic ideas are checked by algebra?
Maybe it's a cloud?
The most common answer to the riddle “water mountain is easier than a pen” is a cloud. Yes, the curly heavenly lambs give the impression of practically weightless formations, obedient even to the faint breeze of the breeze. But perhaps it’s worth more carefully studying this issue.
First, is it right to call a cloud a water mountain?
At air temperatures ranging from 0 to minus 15 degrees Celsius, this “heavenly wool” is an accumulation of cold drops. And despite the fact that with a drop in temperature the structure of these drops becomes crystalline, they are essentially the same liquid. And therefore, opposite the word "water" we put a plus sign. With the mountain, too, everything is right. After all, no matter how amorphous and difficult to measure the cloud may look, its parameters can be determined.
Cirrus cumulus is the largest vertical. They can be 16 kilometers in height. Why not a water mountain? Easier than a pen? Here we try to figure it out.
Zoologists carefully weighed the clothes of birds. According to them, in a tiny hummingbird, the feather does not exceed one gram. A far more representative ostrich has feathers per kilogram of weight.
As for the clouds, the numbers are as follows:
- 1 cloud cubic meter reaches 20 kg.
- At a height of 7 meters, the weight of the cloud can be 20,000 tons.
- The average weight of about 10 tons.
By a simple comparison, we see that the question “a mountain of water is easier than a pen” cannot have the answer “cloud”.
And if it's a cloud?
The cloud, obviously, is even less likely to get to the point and win the puzzle in the competition. Their weight is sometimes measured in the number of elephants.
- A thundercloud weighs an average of 200,000 elephants.
- Hurricane - up to 40 million elephants.
What keeps these titans in the sky? From below they are supported by ascending air currents over which they are formed. The pressure of the rising air is stronger than what the water droplets have in the opposite direction. But they do not always remain warm, but, having cooled down, they are as if “sagging”.
The water inside the cloud freezes. If the ambient temperature is low, precipitation will be in the form of snow or hail. In the case of heat, the frozen drops falling from above melt, and people open umbrellas.
And although all these herds of clouds calmly float in the air, neither an ostrich, nor a hummingbird can pull such a colossus.
Well then fog?
Alas, and with him everything is still hopeless. Its water mountain cannot be easier than a pen.
Even if the fog is not ice crystals that lanterns surround with a sparkling halo or play with brilliance in the sun, and vapor particles (in warmer weather), it is heavier than bird's armor.
So none of the three atmospheric phenomena considered has won.
What about the bubble?
The school made a puzzle “a water mountain is easier than a pen”, classmates along with a cloud, cloud and fog offered another answer. But note that the water bubble is not stable. He simply won’t hold out until he puffs out of the mountain, but bursts.
People, of course, figured out how to improve it. Soap is added to the water. The walls become more elastic and rainbow. Soap bubbles are a favorite pastime of children.
The largest such ball was inflated in 2017 in Russia. This achievement belongs to Lyudmila Darina. The Guinness Book of Records recorded in this case the largest number of people inside the soap bubble. 374!
Both components (both liquid and height) are present. Therefore, it can be called a water mountain. Easier than a pen? Really? After all, there is air in the bubble. Moreover, weighing an average of 1 kg per 1 cm cubic.
Again, by simple calculations, we get that in no way can a bubble be a mountain easier than a pen, except perhaps a small hollow sphere.
They say that human happiness weighs like a cloud. Apparently the riddle "water mountain is easier than a pen" was invented by subtle romantic natures. And do not sit with a calculator, trying to count the elephants in the sky. And do not chase hummingbirds or ostriches to compare them with the cloud. You can choose any of the four proposed answers, unless, of course, the reader is not a supporter of the column “other” and has not come up with his own version.