Make a Cloud in a Bottle
There's no need to look up to see the clouds when you can make your own! With a bottle and just a few household ingredients, you can be a mad scientist for a day and control the weather. Here's how!
What you need:
- One liter clear plastic bottle with cap.
- Warm water
- Matches {only to be used by an adult}
What do you do?
- Fill a bottle with just enough warm water to cover the bottom.
- Light a match and let it burn for a few seconds. Blow the match out and immediately place the head of the match into the bottle. Let the smoke from the match fill the bottle. After a few seconds, the smoke will seem to disappear.
- Quickly screw the cap onto the bottle. Do not squeeze the sides before the bottle is tightly capped, you do not want any of the smoke or air to escape.
- Squeeze the sides of the bottle hard six or seven times. Then wait a few seconds, and squeeze the bottle again, but hold the squeeze for a few seconds and quickly release the squeeze.
- Look at the formation of fog in the bottle and there's your very own cloud!
How does it work?
Squeezing the sides of the bottle forces the molecules to squeeze together or compress. Releasing the pressure allows the air to expand, and in doing so, the temperature of the air becomes cooler. This cooling process allows the molecules to stick together more easily forming tiny droplets around the smoke particles. Most water droplets are formed when water vapor condenses around a condensation nucleus, a tiny particle of smoke, dust, ash, or salt. Clouds in the sky form when the invisible water vapor in the air condenses into visible water droplets or ice crystals.
