What are aerosols?

Aerosols are tiny particles floating in the air, like dust or smoke.

Imagine you're playing with a big pile of sand and you shake it up, some grains jump into the air and float around before they settle back down. That's kind of what happens with aerosols. They can be solid, like pieces of dirt, or liquid, like droplets from a spray bottle.

Aerosols are everywhere! When you breathe in, some of the air you take in has tiny aerosol particles in it, sometimes from a sneeze, sometimes from a car’s exhaust. On a sunny day, you might see aerosols making the sky look hazy or even creating a rainbow after the rain.

If you’ve ever looked at a beam of light coming through a window on a dusty day, you’ve seen aerosols in action. The dust particles scatter the light, making it shine like a path, just like the sunlight shining through a classroom full of flying chalk dust.

Aerosols aren’t magic, they’re just tiny things floating around us all the time!