As the coronavirus lockdown continues to limit our activities, people have turned to puzzles and riddles to test their mental agility. A popular one is “What gets wetter the more it dries?”
This one is a bit confusing as it requires you to consider what we mean when we say something is wet. Water is wet in the sense that it has liquid properties but not wet in the sense that it possesses an ability to make other substances wet. This is because wetness depends on the surface tension of a substance and water has low surface tension (more about this in our article about why raindrops don’t feel wet).
The answer to this question is the towel. The towel is a fabric absorbent that can soak up moisture from any damp surface it’s wiped against. As the towel dries it will absorb more and more moisture until it reaches its saturation point. This is the same reason a blotting paper gets wetter when it’s used to suck up ink.
As the Earth warms, we are seeing areas become wetter while others are getting drier. This is due to the fact that warmer air can hold more water vapor and this causes more of the ocean’s water vapor to rise into the atmosphere. When the vapor cools it forms clouds and eventually falls as rain. However, to make an area wetter there needs to be a source of water nearby or the wind must blow moist air in the right direction.