How to Make a Raindrop

For fans of Humble Pi and Storm in a Teacup, an illuminating romp through fluid dynamics and the invisible flows that shape our world.

When you were a child, did you ever try to run on water? Or wonder how rocks skip? Maybe now you just desperately want to keep food from sticking to your pan. Underlying these quandaries and more is the intriguing area of physics known as fluid dynamics. 

How to Make a Raindrop illuminates the physics that governs how things flow. We move from the mundane—what’s actually happening when we snore, how raindrops form and germs spread—to the extraordinary: singing dunes, mushrooms that make their own breeze, and, yes, a lizard that can run on water. Through it all, science communicator Nicole Sharp draws on the work of some of today’s most creative scientists, whose ingenious experiments are helping us understand vexing phenomena in cooking, transportation, and even public health. Fluid dynamics are at work everywhere we look, she shows, and they just might help us solve some of our most pressing challenges: climate change, microplastics pollution, global pandemics, and more.

With clarity, curiosity, and infectious wit, How to Make a Raindrop is the essential introduction to the wondrous science of all that flows.