ScienceThe StorytellerBeginner
The Secret Life of Clouds, a free science course on Tomo

The Secret Life of Clouds

Like Duolingo, but for The Secret Life of Clouds. Tomo turns the whole topic into a game you play five minutes a day, until it actually sticks.

For the part of you with thirty open tabs that never became anything.

A short one: 26 levels across 3 sections, about 52 minutes end to end, roughly 10 days at five minutes a day. It moves through How Clouds Are Made, Reading the Sky, and Storms and Beyond. It starts from scratch.

26 bite-size levelsAbout 5 minutes each

Free forever · No credit card · iPhone & Android

Cumulus Carl, the guide who teaches the The Secret Life of Clouds course
The Secret Life of Clouds
with Cumulus Carl
26
Levels
3
Sections
5
Min/day
What you'll learn

Key ideas in The Secret Life of Clouds

  • Sunlight heats liquid water on the ground
  • Liquid water turns into invisible vapor and rises
  • Air temperature decreases as altitude increases
  • Cooling causes gas to turn back into liquid droplets
  • The process of cloud formation
  • Water vapor is a gas that cannot be seen
  • Clouds are made of tiny liquid droplets created by cooling
  • The relationship between water states and their visibility
  • The sequence of water moving from the ground into the atmosphere
  • Water vapor requires a solid surface to transition to a liquid state
  • Without a surface, water molecules bounce off each other rather than bonding
  • The term 'cloud seeds' refers to aerosols that attract water
  • These particles act as the nucleus for every single cloud droplet
  • Cloud seeds come from diverse environmental sources
  • The role of cooling in cloud formation
  • Specific geographic features contribute unique particle types to the atmosphere
Why not just Google it

You've tried the other tabs

Wikipedia

Thirty open tabs. Four facts you actually kept.

YouTube

You watched. You nodded. By Sunday it was gone.

ChatGPT

One answer, then back to scrolling.

Online courses

Eight weeks. You meant to finish. You didn't.

Tomo gives The Secret Life of Clouds the Duolingo treatment: levels, streaks, and quick quizzes that test what you just learned. That game loop is what the tabs above never had, so it's the one you actually finish.

Try a question

Here's what playing it feels like

A real question from this course. Take your best guess.

From Ponds to the Sky

What happens to the air temperature as you climb higher into the sky?

Get it right to open this lesson and 25 more in the app.

Course map

Where The Secret Life of Clouds takes you

Ever wonder why clouds stay up in the sky or why they change shape? Discover the hidden science behind the fluffy white shapes floating above your head.

  1. 1

    How Clouds Are Made

    • Water Turning Into Air
    • Dust: The Secret Ingredient
    • Why Clouds Don't Fall Down
    • The Different Layers of the Sky
  2. 2

    Reading the Sky

    • The Giant Cotton Candy Clouds
    • Wispy Tails and High Altitudes
    • Flat Grey Blankets
    • Predicting Rain Before It Happens
    • How Clouds Get Their Colors
    • The Science of a Silver Lining
  3. 3

    Storms and Beyond

    • When Clouds Get Angry
    • How Lightning Starts
    • Clouds on Other Planets

3 sections · 13 units · 26 levels. Built to play, not to enroll.

How it's taught

You pick the voice

This course
The Storyteller

The Secret Life of Clouds is taught in the The Storyteller style: every lesson is a story. Want a different feel? In the app you can spin up the same topic in any of Tomo's teaching styles. Same facts, totally different vibe.

Start free

Start The Secret Life of Clouds today.

Download Tomo, search The Secret Life of Clouds, and play your first lesson in under a minute.