Tense of Adjective Clause attached to Present Participle Main Clause

[Sin-Yu Tsai]

People have seen falling ice sizes of baseballs and balls of light dancing in the sky.

If we put relative pronouns back into the sentence.
1.People have seen falling ice which is sizes of baseballs and balls of light which are dancing in the sky.
2.People have seen falling ice which was sizes of baseballs and balls of light which were dancing in the sky.

Present tense and past tense, which is correct with the situation?

Thank you.

 

[emsr2d2]

None of them is correct.

People have seen pieces of falling ice the size of a baseball.
People have seen pieces of falling ice which is the size of a baseball.
People saw pieces of falling ice which was the size of a baseball.

"Falling ice" is not a natural weather phenomenon. Do you, perhaps, mean "hail"? Pieces of hail can be huge.

 

[Rover_KE]

Allow me to suggest a more realistic scenario:

1. People have seen hailstones the size of golf balls and ball lightning flashing in the sky.

2. People have seen hailstones which were the size of golf balls and ball lightning which flashed in the sky.

 

[Sin-Yu Tsai]

Thank you for your correction.
And, do both tenses make sense? Because the phenomenon occurred in the past. I'm confused if present tense is correct.

 

[Rover_KE]

If the phenomena are occurring in the present, I might call a local radio station and say

'I can see hailstones the size of golf balls and ball lightning flashing in the sky!'

I wouldn't use the relative pronoun at all; I only included it in version 2 above because I thought you wanted to do so.

 

[Sin-Yu Tsai]

What confuses me is why the relative clause can apply present tense in the sentence below, when the event actually occurred in the past.

People have seen pieces of falling ice which is the size of a baseball.

Thank you.

 

[TheParser]

People have seen pieces of falling ice which is the size of a baseball.

Dear Teacher:

I do not understand why you have written "which is."

I thought that the subject is "pieces," not "ice."

Thus, I thought it should read:

People + have seen + pieces (of falling ice) + which / that are the size of a baseball."

Thank you for any clarification.

 

[emsr2d2]

I linked it to "falling ice" which I admit is probably not as natural as "are" to go with "pieces".

However, if you were actually referring to hail, then "hailstones the size of ..." would be what I would actually say.