Page 198 - For Men of Understanding

It is He Who sends
down water from the
have made it bitter, so will you not give thanks?
sky. From it you drink
(Surat al-Waqi’ah: 68-70)
and from it come the
shrubs among which
you graze your herds. RAIN IS SENT DOWN IN MEASURED
And by it He makes AMOUNTS
crops grow for you and
Another item of information provided in the Qur'an
olives and dates and
about rain is that it is sent down to Earth in " measured
grapes and fruit of
every kind. There is amounts." This is mentioned in Surat az-Zukhruf as fol-
certainly a sign in that lows:
for people who reflect. It is He Who sends down water in measured
(Surat an-Nahl: 10-11) amounts from the sky by which We bring a dead
land back to life. That is how you too will be raised
[from the dead]. (Surat az-Zukhruf:11)
This measured quantity in rain has again been discovered by modern
research. It is estimated that in one second, approximately 16 million tons of
water evaporates from the Earth. This figure amounts to 505 trillion tons of
water in one year. This number is equal to the amount of rain that falls on the
Earth in a year. Therefore, water continuously circulates in a balanced cycle,
according to a "measure." Life on Earth depends on this water cycle. Even if all
the available technology in the world were to be employed for this purpose,
this cycle could not be reproduced artificially.
Even a minor deviation in this equilibrium would soon give rise to a major
ecological imbalance that would bring about the end of life on Earth. Yet, it
never happens, and rain continues to fall every year in exactly the same mea-
sure, just as revealed in the Qur'an.
The proportion of rain does not merely apply to its quantity, but also to the
speed of the falling raindrops. The speed of raindrops, regardless of their size,
does not exceed a certain limit.
Philipp Lenard, a German physicist who received the Nobel Prize in physics
in 1905, found that the fall speed increased with drop diameter until a size of
4.5 mm (0.18 inch). For larger drops, however, the fall speed did not increase
beyond 8 metres per second (26 ft/sec). (Keith C. Heidorn, Ph.D., "Philipp
Lenard: Brushing the Teardrops from Rain;" www.islandnet.com/~see/weath-
er/history/lenard.htm) He attributed this to the changes in drop shape caused
by the air flow as the drop size increased. The change in shape thus increased
the air resistance of the drop and slowed its fall rate.
As can be seen, the Qur'an may also be drawing our attention to the sub-
tle adjustment in rain which could not have been known 1,400 years ago.

196 For Men of Understanding