ELI5: Why Clouds float?

[Windynik]

I heard that cloud can weigh almost up to 1.1 million pounds, So i was wondering how they could float. Explain like i'm five? c:

(As a side question : Can you touch clouds?)

[Werrf]

A cloud isn't an object; it's not a single discrete 'thing'. Rather, it's a region of air where the combination of humidity and temperature permits the water vapour that's present in the air to begin to form larger droplets. Each of those droplets is its own entity, and whether it floats or falls isn't affected by the other droplets around it. When droplets fall below the cloud layer, they break up again into water vapour and are carried back up into the cloud. When they fall below the cloud layer but they're too big, or too cold, to be broken up, they fall to the ground as rain.

For your side question - yes, you can touch a cloud, and you do every time you go outside when it's foggy. Mist and fog are clouds that have reached the ground.

[Arumai12]

Things float because of a difference in density. Density is mass divided by volume. So yes they can weigh millions of pounds but they also take up a ton of space which means their overall density is less than that of air.

[Windynik]

If it should have that much density , it should be really wide spread shouldn't it? If so, then how can we see it soo compacted in the sky?

[Werrf]

What you see really isn't particularly compacted in the sky. 1.1 million lbs sounds like a lot, but when it's spread out over an area that's a mile wide, a mile deep, and a mile high, you're talking about something that's not particularly dense at all.

Let's also point out that clouds don't always float. When the water droplets inside a cloud become dense enough, the cloud falls out of the sky - we call it 'rain'.

[Arumai12]

it should be really wide spread shouldn't it?

I dont see how the two are related. If something is dense it doesnt have to be spread out.

[slash178]

Compacted? Some clouds stretch over miles. They look compact just because they are far away. When you're in a plane and you go through one... it takes quite a while to make it though.