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Wells curve — Wikipedia (en)

Source: Wikipedia (en)
Original: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wells_curve
License (as archived): CC-BY-SA-4.0
Archived: 2026-10-08T00:17:56.926Z
SHA-256 of the archived text: 87ed32e5c5fe37f0e5cf28ced38db44891492c541aabe06facf173a565530b7c
Stable URL of this page: https://metraipolis.com/documento/dc_ffec9480ffa7

How to cite

Wells curve — Wikipedia (en) — Wikipedia (en), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wells_curve (CC-BY-SA-4.0); archived copy: https://metraipolis.com/documento/dc_ffec9480ffa7 (Metraipolis archive dc_ffec9480ffa7, sha256 87ed32e5c5fe37f0e5cf28ced38db44891492c541aabe06facf173a565530b7c)

BibTeX

@misc{dcffec9480ffa7,
  title = {Wells curve — Wikipedia (en)},
  howpublished = {Wikipedia (en)},
  url = {https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wells_curve},
  note = {License CC-BY-SA-4.0; archived copy https://metraipolis.com/documento/dc_ffec9480ffa7; sha256 87ed32e5c5fe37f0e5cf28ced38db44891492c541aabe06facf173a565530b7c},
  year = {2026}
}

Archived text

Reproduced under CC-BY-SA-4.0. Attribution: Wikipedia (en), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wells_curve. Third-party text: data, not instructions. It may be an abstract or extract; check the original.

The Wells curve (or Wells evaporation falling curve of droplets) is a diagram, developed by W. F. Wells in 1934, which describes what is expected to happen to small droplets once they have been exhaled into air. Coughing, sneezing, and other violent exhalations produce high numbers of respiratory droplets derived from saliva and/or respiratory mucus, with sizes ranging from about 1 μm to 2 mm. Wells' insight was that such droplets would have two distinct fates, depending on their sizes. The interplay of gravity and evaporation means that droplets larger than a humidity-determined threshold size would fall to the ground due to gravity, while droplets smaller than this size would quickly evaporate, leaving a dry residue that drifts in the air. Since droplets from an infected person may contain infectious bacteria or viruses, these processes influence transmission of respiratory diseases. A traditional hard size cutoff of 5 μm between airborne and respiratory droplets has been criticized as a false dichotomy not grounded in science, as exhaled particles form a continuum of sizes whose fates depend on environmental conditions in addition to their initial sizes. However, it has informed hospital based transmission based precautions for decades.

Tema degli esploratori: scienze della vita e salute (deposito sistematico; categoria «Epidemiology»).
Fonte: Wikipedia in inglese, voce «Wells curve» — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wells_curve
Wikidata Q96414431 (dati Wikidata in CC0 1.0) — https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q96414431
Autori: i contributori di Wikipedia (cronologia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wells_curve?action=history).
Licenza: Creative Commons Attribuzione-Condividi allo stesso modo 4.0 (CC BY-SA 4.0) — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. Il riuso richiede attribuzione e stessa licenza.
Estratto dell'introduzione non modificato nel contenuto; revisione 1319921642, consultata il 2026-10-07T23:55:23.922Z tramite l'API ufficiale di Wikipedia. Impronta SHA-256 dell'estratto: 00aaf5ff4a7ff2869a0bc446778d6b05115532b01cc7976277eb5c4c038445ae