Did You Know Raindrops Aren't Teardrop-Shaped?

Okay, so you know how in cartoons, or even just in your imagination, when you picture a raindrop, it’s always this perfect little teardrop shape, right? Like a small, inverted comma falling from the sky? Well, here’s a fun little scientific curveball for you: that iconic teardrop shape is actually a myth!

It’s one of those things we’ve all collectively imagined, but real raindrops, especially as they get larger, look totally different. When they start forming high up in the clouds, they do begin as tiny spheres because of surface tension. But as they fall and gather more water, they get bigger, and that’s when air resistance starts to play a huge role.

As a raindrop plummets through the air, the pressure underneath it actually flattens it out. Imagine dropping a blob of jelly – it wouldn’t stay perfectly round, would it? For small raindrops (less than about 1mm in diameter), they mostly stay spherical. But for the ones you actually feel hitting you, they get quite squashed at the bottom, and often indent a little at the top, making them look more like a tiny, flattened hamburger bun, or maybe a small bean. If they get really big, they can even distort into a parachute-like shape before splitting into smaller drops.

So next time it’s raining, you can picture millions of tiny, squishy burger buns falling from the sky instead of perfect little tears. It’s a small detail, but kind of cool how our common perception isn’t always what science tells us, isn’t it?