Tag: weather

Hurricane in a Bowl

Materials:

  • Large bowl
  • Water
  • Spoon
  • Food coloring – We used liquid food coloring.

Directions:

  1. Fill the bowl about 3/4 full with water.
  2. Stir the water with a spoon until it is spinning.
  3. Place a drop of food coloring near the center of the bowl as the water continues to spin.
  4. Observe how a hurricane is being created with the eye of the storm in the middle and the bands becoming loose as you look toward the edges of the bowl.

Snowstorm in a Jar

Materials:

Directions:

  1. Fill your mason jar about 3/4 full with baby oil.  We used a 16 ounce jar so we filled it with about 1 1/2 cups of baby oil.
  2. In a small bowl mix about 1 teaspoon of acrylic paint with about 1/2 cup of water.  These measurements do not need to be exact.  You want to create “white water” that will fill the rest of your mason jar.
  3. Add the “white water” mixture to the baby oil in the mason jar.  Allow the mixture to settle to the bottom of the jar.
  4. Add glitter to the mason jar.  You can add as much or as little as you would like.  We added about 1 teaspoon of glitter.  Allow the glitter to settle to the bottom of the jar.
  5. Break the Alka Seltzer tablet in half and drop it into the mason jar.  Watch the snowstorm take place!

Note:  Do NOT tighten the lid on the jar!  Pressure will build up and it could be dangerous.  Leave the lid off completely during the “snowstorm” or gently set on top.

Rain Cloud in a Jar

Materials:

  • Clear glasses
  • Food coloring
  • Shaving cream
  • Small bowl or container for holding 1-2 ounces
  • Water
  • Eye dropper or pipette

Instructions:

  1. Start by filling the small containers with water. The less water you use (so the more concentrated the food coloring), the faster your “rain” will drop. But on the other hand, the more water you use, the more rain you’ll be able to make.
  2. Add different colors of food coloring to each of the small containers. My containers held about 1 ounce of water and I added about 10 drops of food coloring.
  3. Fill a clear glass with water about 2/3 full.
  4. Top it with a generous amount of shaving cream.
  5. Use the eye dropper (or measuring spoon) to drop the different colors of water onto the shaving cream cloud. The closer you squirt to the edges, the faster it will go through the shaving cream and come down as rain.

Note:  You can tell your kids that the water is like the air, and the shaving cream is like the clouds. And as the clouds get saturated with water, they produce rain.