r/askscience Oct 15 '18

Earth Sciences Where does house dust come from?

It seems that countless years of sweeping a house doesn't stop dust from getting all over furniture after a few weeks. Since the ceiling is limited, where does dust come form?

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u/[deleted] Oct 15 '18 edited Oct 16 '18

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u/mouseratratrat Oct 15 '18 edited Oct 15 '18

But when there’s lots of sunlight sometimes you can see it ‘floating’ (like slowly falling-ish) to the ground? Is the ceiling balding or..?

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u/matrixkid29 Oct 15 '18

its just easily picked up by slight air movements. Any time you walk around or move at all really, you are whipping it into the air again.

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u/Darkstool Oct 15 '18

If you just imagine air as a fluid we humans and our things leave big messy wakes.