See if they can come up with any other places a vortex might occur. Examples include hurricanes and tornadoes that form over rivers, lakes or other bodies of water, which are called waterspouts. Tell your child about other vortexes in nature. Ask them to predict before they make the movement whether another tornado will form. Then have them move the bottle up and down. Have them move the bottle in the opposite direction. Have your child do variations on the experiment, and note whether they make a similar tornado. This is what catches the glitter and makes it move. The motion is directed toward the center, which is also referred to as the vortex. The water in the bottle is responding to centripetal force, a force that acts on a body moving in a circular motion. Once it does, explain to your child why this is happening to help them understand the forces at play with a real tornado. It may take a couple of tries to get the tornado to function correctly. Have your child watch as it continues to spin in the direction you were moving the bottle.

You will see a swirling funnel of glitter that looks like a tornado. Stop after about 20 seconds and hold the bottle. Grasping it by the neck, twirl it in a circular pattern as fast as you can. How to Perform the Tornado in a Bottle ExperimentĪdd water to the bottle until it is filled up to about two inches from the top. A plastic or glass bottle with a narrow top and a cap, such as a clean soda or iced tea bottle.To perform this experiment, you will need:

Find instruments that measure weather for kids at home or in classrooms.Click Here To Register For One Of Our Virtual Programs Or teach a weather unit study using barometers, educational weather kits, books, and more. Study clouds, precipitation, barometric (air) pressure, humidity, and other facets of the daily weather! Get up-to-the-minute weather information with a digital weather station. And projects, like Clouds & Weather Forecasting and Weather Experiments, help them make connections to resulting weather patterns. A cloud chart helps them visualize their appearance. To teach about daily weather for kids, first help them understand the basic clouds types and what kind of weather they usually bring. Learn more about the way weather works with hands-on experiment kits. Convection, high-pressure and low-pressure systems, evaporation-these weather phenomena influence our lives! They help determine if your game is called off due to rain or if there will be a sunny day for sledding. The science of weather affects everyone every day.

Easy weather science projects