Remodel a powerful force of nature!
Put simply: a tornado is a spinning column of air with the top of the tunnel touching the cloud base and bottom touching the ground. So how would you make your own tornado? Well, you would ideally like to replicate that funnel - preferably a little smaller. The funnel is a big part of tornados and it is what most think about when they think tornado.
What you need
- a couple of 1 litre plastic bottles
- water
- some tape
- some food colouring to the water
How you do it
- Take one of the bottles and fill it halfway with water.
- Take the cap off of the other bottle and place it on top of the half-filled one so that the top of each bottle is touching one another.
- Tape the two bottles together in this position. Try to avoid gaps between the bottles when taping to prevent leakage. You might need quite a bit of tape.
- Once the two bottles are secure, they should look roughly like an hourglass.
- Hold the taped section with one hand and the bottom bottle that has the water with the other. Turn the bottles over so that the one with the water is on top. Swirl the bottles a few times and a funnel should form. And there you have it! A tornado in a bottle. But instead of air, we use water.
- Note: It might be hard to get the bottles to align right and not leak with just tape - you can use a piece of plastic or rubber hose with a diameter a little smaller then that of the bottle necks as a way to connect them - this should be leak proof.
The Science
What's going on here? Ah, this is often the first question of a scientist. Tornados are often destructive and powerful weather events. Did you notice how quickly the bottle drained once the funnel formed? Try turning over the bottles and time how long it takes for the fluid to drain from one to the other without creating the funnel. Now do the same thing, but this time form the tornado funnel. Did one drain faster then the other? You should have noticed that when we used the funnel, the bottle drained much faster. Could this be useful in everyday life? Why is it faster? Try coming up with some of your own questions, you might be surprised by how many interesting things there are to be discovered!