# How to estimate condensation from air?

How to estimate the amount of water condensing from air on a surface, given the air's temperature and relative humidity and how they change over time, the surface temperature, material's thermal properites, roughness and whatever else needs to be given about the air and surface?

For my purpose, we may assume the surface starts off dry, but the more general situation would be as interesting. If enough water condenses, it'll form drops and run off - can we account for that?

Are there some fairly simple formulas or rules of thumb? High accuracy is not needed; I'll be happy to get grams per sq meter per second (or whatever) to within a factor of two. (What if we wanted higher accuracy?)

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I'm not sure about this one... it almost seems more like chemistry than physics. Then again, I have no idea how to answer the question, so I'll leave it alone. –  David Z Nov 16 '10 at 5:01
@David I would say this is in the blurry interface of physics and chemistry, as you can see in the link, the basis for it is statistical mechanics. And actually, this is very much the kind of question I would like to see here. –  Bernardo Kyotoku Nov 16 '10 at 9:00
I agree with Bernardo Kyotoku. To be quite honest, I'm sick of all the high energy / GR questions and would prefer a bigger spread of questions. –  j.c. Nov 18 '10 at 2:56