Question: If hot air rises why is the top of a mountain cold

Andres Olivares del Campo answered on 15 Nov 2016:

This is a very good question! And I can see why you are wondering that, but I think that the fact that air rises, does not mean that the hot air will stop on top of a mountain, but it could get going higher and higher in the atmosphere. Then, if the hot air is not stopped on the mountain, you should not feel hotter there!

Also, the reason why it gets colder the higher you go is because the pressure that you feel due to the atmosphere is lower and lower as you go further up. Now, if you think that the pressure is related to how far away from each other each gas molecule is. Less pressure means that the molecules in the gas are further away from each other. Then, if the temperature is a measure of how often the molecules in a gas collide against each other (the more collisions, the hotter the gas is), if they are further away from each other, they will collide less and therefore, the temperature is lower!

Hope this makes sense!