A
puddle is a small accumulation of
liquidLiquid is one of the three classical states of matter . Like a gas, a liquid is able to flow and take the shape of a container. Some liquids resist compression, while others can be compressed. Unlike a gas, a liquid does not disperse to fill every space of a container, and maintains a fairly...
, usually water, on a surface. It can form either by pooling in a depression on the surface, or by
surface tensionSurface tension is a property of the surface of a liquid that allows it to resist an external force. It is revealed, for example, in floating of some objects on the surface of water, even though they are denser than water, and in the ability of some insects to run on the water surface...
upon a flat surface. They are often formed anywhere from
rainRain is liquid precipitation, as opposed to non-liquid kinds of precipitation such as snow, hail and sleet. Rain requires the presence of a thick layer of the atmosphere to have temperatures above the melting point of water near and above the Earth's surface...
water, in gardens from
irrigationIrrigation may be defined as the science of artificial application of water to the land or soil. It is used to assist in the growing of agricultural crops, maintenance of landscapes, and revegetation of disturbed soils in dry areas and during periods of inadequate rainfall...
, and on municipal
streetA street is a paved public thoroughfare in a built environment. It is a public parcel of land adjoining buildings in an urban context, on which people may freely assemble, interact, and move about. A street can be as simple as a level patch of dirt, but is more often paved with a hard, durable...
s from
urban runoffUrban runoff is surface runoff of rainwater created by urbanization. This runoff is a major source of water pollution in many parts of the United States and other urban communities worldwide.-Overview:...
.
A puddle is generally small enough for an adult to step over, shallow enough to walk through, and too small to traverse in a
boatA boat is a watercraft of any size designed to float or plane, to provide passage across water. Usually this water will be inland or in protected coastal areas. However, boats such as the whaleboat were designed to be operated from a ship in an offshore environment. In naval terms, a boat is a...
or
raftA raft is any flat structure for support or transportation over water. It is the most basic of boat design, characterized by the absence of a hull...
. Puddles can be a source of fascination for children, as well as attracting other small wildlife.
Natural puddles and wildlife
Puddles in
natural landscapeA natural landscape is a landscape that is unaffected by human activity. A natural landscape is intact when all living and nonliving elements are free to move and change. The nonliving elements distinguish a natural landscape from a wilderness. A wilderness includes areas within which natural...
s and
habitat* Habitat , a place where a species lives and grows*Human habitat, a place where humans live, work or play** Space habitat, a space station intended as a permanent settlement...
s, when not
precipitationIn meteorology, precipitation In meteorology, precipitation In meteorology, precipitation (also known as one of the classes of hydrometeors, which are atmospheric water phenomena is any product of the condensation of atmospheric water vapor that falls under gravity. The main forms of precipitation...
sourced, can indicate the presence of a
seepA Seep is a moist or wet place where water, usually groundwater, reaches the earth's surface from an underground aquifer.-Description:Seeps are usually not of sufficient volume to be flowing beyond their above-ground location. They are part of the limnology-geomorphology system...
or spring. They can provide essential moisture for small wildlife, such as birds and insects. Many
butterflyA butterfly is a mainly day-flying insect of the order Lepidoptera, which includes the butterflies and moths. Like other holometabolous insects, the butterfly's life cycle consists of four parts: egg, larva, pupa and adult. Most species are diurnal. Butterflies have large, often brightly coloured...
(
LepidopteraLepidoptera is a large order of insects that includes moths and butterflies . It is one of the most widespread and widely recognizable insect orders in the world, encompassing moths and the three superfamilies of butterflies, skipper butterflies, and moth-butterflies...
) species need puddles for
mud-puddlingMud-puddling is the phenomenon mostly seen in butterflies and involves their aggregation on substrates like wet soil, dung and carrion to obtain nutrients such as salts and amino acids. This behaviour has also been seen in some other insects, notably the leafhoppers.Lepidoptera are diverse in...
to obtain
nutrientA nutrient is a chemical that an organism needs to live and grow or a substance used in an organism's metabolism which must be taken in from its environment. They are used to build and repair tissues, regulate body processes and are converted to and used as energy...
s such as
saltIn chemistry, salts are ionic compounds that result from the neutralization reaction of an acid and a base. They are composed of cations and anions so that the product is electrically neutral...
s and
amino acidAmino acids are molecules containing an amine group, a carboxylic acid group and a side-chain that varies between different amino acids. The key elements of an amino acid are carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen...
s, including some types that are endemic
endangered speciesAn endangered species is a population of organisms which is at risk of becoming extinct because it is either few in numbers, or threatened by changing environmental or predation parameters...
.
SwallowThe swallows and martins are a group of passerine birds in the family Hirundinidae which are characterised by their adaptation to aerial feeding...
s use the damp
loamLoam is soil composed of sand, silt, and clay in relatively even concentration . Loam soils generally contain more nutrients and humus than sandy soils, have better infiltration and drainage than silty soils, and are easier to till than clay soils...
which gathers in puddles as a form of
cementIn the most general sense of the word, a cement is a binder, a substance that sets and hardens independently, and can bind other materials together. The word "cement" traces to the Romans, who used the term opus caementicium to describe masonry resembling modern concrete that was made from crushed...
to help to build their nests. The reduction in the number of puddles in the countryside due to
intensive farmingIntensive farming or intensive agriculture is an agricultural production system characterized by the high inputs of capital, labour, or heavy usage of technologies such as pesticides and chemical fertilizers relative to land area....
,
urban sprawlUrban sprawl, also known as suburban sprawl, is a multifaceted concept, which includes the spreading outwards of a city and its suburbs to its outskirts to low-density and auto-dependent development on rural land, high segregation of uses Urban sprawl, also known as suburban sprawl, is a...
, and
climate changeClimate change is a significant and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over periods ranging from decades to millions of years. It may be a change in average weather conditions or the distribution of events around that average...
is partially the cause of a decrease in the swallow population.
Wildlife uses puddles as a drinking source, a bath such as bathing
birdBirds are feathered, winged, bipedal, endothermic , egg-laying, vertebrate animals. Around 10,000 living species and 188 families makes them the most speciose class of tetrapod vertebrates. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Extant birds range in size from...
s, or in the case of some smaller forms such as
tadpolesTadpoles are a psychedelic rock band formed in 1990 in New York City by Todd Parker , Michael Kite Audino and Josh Bracken In 1992, Nick Kramer , David Max and Andrew Jackson of the fledgling Manhattan group, Hit, joined the Tadpoles after putting Hit on hiatus.In 1993 Kite and Jackson left the...
or
mosquitoMosquitoes are members of a family of nematocerid flies: the Culicidae . The word Mosquito is from the Spanish and Portuguese for little fly...
larvae, an entire habitat. Raised constructed puddles,
bird bathA bird bath is an artificial "puddle" or small shallow pond, created with a water- filled basin, for birds to bathe and 'cool off' in, and drink from...
s, are a part of domestic and wildlife gardens as a
garden ornamentA Garden ornament is an item used for garden, landscape, and park enhancement and decoration.The category can include:*bird baths,**bird feeders,**nest box-bird houses*columns - cast stone*fountains,**rocks and boulders with basins...
and "micro-habitat"
restoration-Definition:Restoration ecology is the scientific study and practice of renewing and restoring degraded, damaged, or destroyed ecosystems and habitats in the environment by active human intervention and action, within a short time frame...
.
Small seasonal riparian plants, grasses, and
wildflowerA wildflower is a flower that grows wild, meaning it was not intentionally seeded or planted. Yet "wildflower" meadows of a few mixed species are sold in seed packets. The term "wildflower" has been made vague by commercial seedsmen who are interested in selling more flowers or seeds more...
s germinate with the ephemeral "head start" of moisture.
Artificial puddles and transportation
Puddles commonly form during
rainRain is liquid precipitation, as opposed to non-liquid kinds of precipitation such as snow, hail and sleet. Rain requires the presence of a thick layer of the atmosphere to have temperatures above the melting point of water near and above the Earth's surface...
storms, and can cause problems for transport, especially when combined with cold conditions to form patches of
iceIce is water frozen into the solid state. Usually ice is the phase known as ice Ih, which is the most abundant of the varying solid phases on the Earth's surface. It can appear transparent or opaque bluish-white color, depending on the presence of impurities or air inclusions...
, which are highly slippery and difficult to see. Due to the angle of the road, puddles tend to be forced by gravity to gather on the edge of the road. This causes the notorious '
splashIn fluid mechanics, a splash is a sudden disturbance to the otherwise quiescent free surface of a liquid . The disturbance is typically caused by a solid object suddenly hitting the surface, although splashes can occur in which moving liquid supplies the energy...
' as cars drive quickly through the puddle, which causes water to be sprayed onto
pedestrianA pedestrian is a person traveling on foot, whether walking or running. In some communities, those traveling using roller skates or skateboards are also considered to be pedestrians. In modern times, the term mostly refers to someone walking on a road or footpath, but this was not the case...
s on the adjacent pavement. Sometimes, irresponsible drivers do this deliberately, which, in some countries, can lead to prosecution for careless driving.
Puddles commonly form in potholes in a dirt road, or in any other space with a shallow depression and dirt. In such cases, these are sometimes referred to as
mud puddles, because mud tends to form in the bottoms, resulting in dirtied wheels or boots when disturbed.
Puddle management
Puddles tend to
evaporateEvaporation is a type of vaporization of a liquid that occurs only on the surface of a liquid. The other type of vaporization is boiling, which, instead, occurs on the entire mass of the liquid....
quickly due to the high surface area-to-volume ratio, allowing a large number of molecules to be vaporised at once, and as such tend to be short lived. However, due to this property, puddles of chemicals such as
bromineBromine ") is a chemical element with the symbol Br, an atomic number of 35, and an atomic mass of 79.904. It is in the halogen element group. The element was isolated independently by two chemists, Carl Jacob Löwig and Antoine Jerome Balard, in 1825–1826...
, which produce highly toxic vapour, are highly dangerous and spills such as this must be dealt with immediately, with
emergency evacuationEmergency evacuation is the immediate and rapid movement of people away from the threat or actual occurrence of a hazard. Examples range from the small scale evacuation of a building due to a bomb threat or fire to the large scale evacuation of a district because of a flood, bombardment or...
as a common step.
In order to deal with puddles, roads and pavements are often built with a
camberCamber may refer to a variety of curvatures and angles:* Camber angle, the angle made by the wheels of a vehicle* Camber thrust in bike technology* In the steel industry, the concavity of rolls...
(technically called 'crowning'), being slightly convex in nature, to force puddles to drain into the gutter, which has
storm drainA storm drain, storm sewer , stormwater drain or drainage well system or simply a drain or drain system is designed to drain excess rain and ground water from paved streets, parking lots, sidewalks, and roofs. Storm drains vary in design from small residential dry wells to large municipal systems...
grates to allow the water to drain into the sewers. In addition to this, some surfaces are made to be porous, allowing the water to drain straight through the surface to the
aquiferAn aquifer is a wet underground layer of water-bearing permeable rock or unconsolidated materials from which groundwater can be usefully extracted using a water well. The study of water flow in aquifers and the characterization of aquifers is called hydrogeology...
below.
Puddles which do not evaporate quickly can become standing water, which can become
pollutedPollution is the introduction of contaminants into a natural environment that causes instability, disorder, harm or discomfort to the ecosystem i.e. physical systems or living organisms. Pollution can take the form of chemical substances or energy, such as noise, heat or light...
by decaying organisms and are often home to breeding
mosquitoMosquitoes are members of a family of nematocerid flies: the Culicidae . The word Mosquito is from the Spanish and Portuguese for little fly...
s, which can act as vectors for diseases such as
malariaMalaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease of humans and other animals caused by eukaryotic protists of the genus Plasmodium. The disease results from the multiplication of Plasmodium parasites within red blood cells, causing symptoms that typically include fever and headache, in severe cases...
and of more recent concern in certain areas of the world,
West Nile VirusWest Nile virus is a virus of the family Flaviviridae. Part of the Japanese encephalitis antigenic complex of viruses, it is found in both tropical and temperate regions. It mainly infects birds, but is known to infect humans, horses, dogs, cats, bats, chipmunks, skunks, squirrels, domestic...
.
Physics
In the
physicsPhysics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...
context puddles may refer to where a
liquidLiquid is one of the three classical states of matter . Like a gas, a liquid is able to flow and take the shape of a container. Some liquids resist compression, while others can be compressed. Unlike a gas, a liquid does not disperse to fill every space of a container, and maintains a fairly...
forms into patches on top of a surface of a
solidSolid is one of the three classical states of matter . It is characterized by structural rigidity and resistance to changes of shape or volume. Unlike a liquid, a solid object does not flow to take on the shape of its container, nor does it expand to fill the entire volume available to it like a...
material.
History
Medieval legend spoke of one man who was desperate to find building materials for his house, so he stole
cobblestoneCobblestones are stones that were frequently used in the pavement of early streets. "Cobblestone" is derived from the very old English word "cob", which had a wide range of meanings, one of which was "rounded lump" with overtones of large size...
s from the road surface. The remaining hole filled with water and a horseman who later walked through the 'puddle' actually found himself drowning. A similar legend, of a young boy drowning in a puddle that formed in a
chuckholeA pothole is a type of disruption in the surface of a roadway where a portion of the road material has broken away, leaving a hole.- Formation :...
in a major street in the early years of Seattle, Washington, is told as part of the Seattle Underground Tour.
When
Walter RaleighSir Walter Raleigh was an English aristocrat, writer, poet, soldier, courtier, spy, and explorer. He is also well known for popularising tobacco in England....
met Queen Elizabeth I, Raleigh is reputed to have thrown his coat over a
mudMud is a mixture of water and some combination of soil, silt, and clay. Ancient mud deposits harden over geological time to form sedimentary rock such as shale or mudstone . When geological deposits of mud are formed in estuaries the resultant layers are termed bay muds...
dy puddle to allow the Queen to cross without getting her feet wet. Such activities were once part of
chivalryChivalry is a term related to the medieval institution of knighthood which has an aristocratic military origin of individual training and service to others. Chivalry was also the term used to refer to a group of mounted men-at-arms as well as to martial valour...
, but are less common nowadays.
Military
In military terminology, puddles are "liquid terrain obstacles deprived of tactical importance". In
military slangMilitary slang is an array of colloquial terminology used commonly by military personnel, including slang which is unique to or originates with the armed forces. It often takes the form of abbreviations/acronyms or derivations of the NATO Phonetic Alphabet, or otherwise incorporates aspects of...
, "the Puddle" may also refer to the
Pacific OceanThe Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east.At 165.2 million square kilometres in area, this largest division of the World...
, much as the
Atlantic OceanThe Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about , it covers approximately 20% of the Earth's surface and about 26% of its water surface area...
is referred to as "
the PondA pond is a body of standing water, either natural or man-made, that is usually smaller than a lake. A wide variety of man-made bodies of water are classified as ponds, including water gardens, water features and koi ponds; all designed for aesthetic ornamentation as landscape or architectural...
".
Recreation
Puddles are often a source of recreation by children, who regard jumping in puddles as an "up-side" to rain. A children's nursery rhyme records the story of
Doctor Foster"Doctor Foster" is an English language nursery rhyme that has appeared in many anthologies since the nineteenth century. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 19288.-The rhyme:...
and his encounter with a puddle in Gloucester.
Puddle theory
Puddle theory was devised by
Douglas AdamsDouglas Noel Adams was an English writer and dramatist. He is best known as the author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which started life in 1978 as a BBC radio comedy before developing into a "trilogy" of five books that sold over 15 million copies in his lifetime, a television...
to satirize the
Fine-tuned UniverseThe fine-tuned universe is the proposition that the conditions that allow life in the Universe can only occur when certain universal fundamental physical constants lie within a very narrow range, so that if any of several fundamental constants were only slightly different the universe would be...
argument for supernatural creationism. As quoted in
Richard DawkinsClinton Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL , known as Richard Dawkins, is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author...
' eulogy for Douglas Adams:
... imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, "This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!" This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be all right, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise.
See also
- Puddling (biology)
Mud-puddling is the phenomenon mostly seen in butterflies and involves their aggregation on substrates like wet soil, dung and carrion to obtain nutrients such as salts and amino acids. This behaviour has also been seen in some other insects, notably the leafhoppers.Lepidoptera are diverse in...
- Puddling (engineering)
Puddle is a watertight material based on clay used in building and maintaining canals or reservoirs. Puddling is the process of lining the channel with puddle....
- Puddling (metallurgy)
Puddling was an Industrial Revolution means of making iron and steel. In the original puddling technique, molten iron in a reverberatory furnace was stirred with rods, which were consumed in the process...
- Rill
A Rill can be a:*1.) natural fluvial topographic feature;*2.) functional constructed channel to carry a water supply from a water source some distance away;*3.) aesthetic garden water feature.-Natural:...
- Seep (hydrology)
A Seep is a moist or wet place where water, usually groundwater, reaches the earth's surface from an underground aquifer.-Description:Seeps are usually not of sufficient volume to be flowing beyond their above-ground location. They are part of the limnology-geomorphology system...
- Spring (hydrology)