As I might have mentioned, we are in the middle of a drought here in the Lone Star State. It hasn't rained in...well...a really really really long time. I thought it might be time to take matters in to our own hands!
As I explained to the children, what you need to make it rain is hot and cold air. When the cold air high in the atmosphere meets the warm air rising up from the earth, condensation is created. When the drops of moisture become heavy enough they fall to the ground.
We created our hot air by boiling a kettle of water. We created the cold air high in the atmosphere with a tray of ice.
We had to be patient for this experiment. It doesn't happen right away. At first it didn't work at all. We had our tray too high up and the heat wasn't reaching the cold air. I explained to Ivy that this was what was in fact happening in Texas right now. Although we have plenty of hot air (its supposed to get to 107 today) There has been a high pressure system hovering right smack on top of us for a while now and its pushing the cold air up.
Once we lowered our tray the condensation really started to build up. Birdy and Ivy took turns touching the top of the tray to feel the moisture.
I tried to get a good picture of the drops as they started to fall but all the steam from the tea pot made that difficult. But, huge drops did start to form on the bottom of the tray and when they got heavy enough fell down in to the dish I had set underneath. Ta Da! Rain!
Neat! I bet that was cool for them to see the raindrops forming. This is a great science experiment to learn about the weather!
ReplyDeleteBrilliant! There is no better way to explain rain than this experiment
ReplyDeleteOh thanks! We had so much fun. Im so glad you stopped by.
ReplyDeleteGreat idea!!
ReplyDeleteI've heard of this rain thing, but I agree it's been so long since I saw it I don't know what it is.........
ReplyDeleteLove this experiment!