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Traces of various solid elements such as lead, salt and sulfur may be detected in rainwater for a variety of reasons.

1. There are many kinds of substances floating in the air in the form of tiny particles, including dust, pollen grains, and pollutants such as sulfur dioxide, and lead compounds.

2. The density of water vapor is lower than that of the air, therefore water vapor goes up in the air.

3. The higher the altitude, the colder it becomes.

Water vapor cools down as it ascends in the air. The molecules of the cooled water vapor are attracted to the surface of the floating solid particles. It takes billions of water molecules to form a droplet. The droplets collide with each other and merge into bigger and heavier water drops. It takes about a million droplets to make a raindrop, which finally becomes so heavy that the air cannot hold it up any longer. Then many such drops fall out of the sky, and that's how the rain forms.

The tiny solid particles floating in the air are very important--they are the bases of rain drops. In fact, without solid particles, there will be no rains no matter how much water vapor there is in the air.

Therefore, rainwater is not pure water, and there are many tiny solid particles within every raindrop. Some solid particles may dissolve in water, some not.

In some cases a waterspout (a tornado forming over the ocean) can lift thousands to millions of gallons of sea water high into the air which can subsequently drop onto land, but this is not the normal process for rain formation.

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Related Questions

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