so take a look at this what does this
look like to you well to me it looks
like a tornado
and that's the big idea today today
we're going to take a closer look at
tornadoes and hurricanes
and see how they're similar and
different hi i'm jared welcome to fun
science demos you know one thing that
scientists like to study and predict
is the weather and some of the wildest
storms out there
are tornadoes and hurricanes sometimes
kids get the two storms confused because
they both
spin but they also have something else
in common
both storms need just the right
conditions to form
both of these storms a tornado and a
hurricane can only
form in an area of low pressure
scientists have discovered that areas of
high pressure generally bring
really nice weather sunny clear but
scientists have also discovered that
areas of low pressure bring
really stormy weather and that's the
perfect condition
for tornadoes and hurricanes to form so
tornadoes and hurricanes both
spin and they both form in an area of
low pressure
but how are they different so we're
going to now talk about the differences
of tornadoes and hurricanes
to do that we're going to try and make a
hurricane in this bowl but first
let's take a closer look at where
hurricanes form
here i have a map and the colored
parts of the map show you where
hurricanes form what do you notice
about our map well the first thing i
notice is that
it looks like all the colored areas are
happening over
water what kind of water well the ocean
most hurricanes are going to be forming
over the ocean but what part of the
ocean
it looks like they're all forming in the
center of our map
what's in the center of our map it's the
equator and what happens at the equator
well that's the warmest part of our
earth
now notice when big storms form in the
ocean in this area
they're called hurricanes when big
storms form in this area
they're called cyclones and when big
storms form in this area of the ocean
they're called typhoons now they may be
called something different but they're
really just the same
thing big spinning storms that form
over warm water but remember this is
along the equator and that's the hottest
part of our
earth so the sun is beating down on
huge amounts of all of this ocean
causing this water to heat up and
evaporate
it turns from a liquid to water vapor
and that water vapor and that warm air
rise up over the
ocean creating an area of low pressure
and huge clouds
and those clouds start to spin
so we're going to make our hurricane in
this bowl but remember hurricanes are
hundreds of miles wide forming out over
the ocean they're massive
and we the only reason we can see
hurricanes spinning is because we see
the clouds spinning
scientists can take pictures and videos
of hurricanes from satellites out in
space
and what we really see are the clouds
spinning we're going to see if we can
make
that same spinning effect but we can't
use clouds we're going to use
red food coloring so to make our
hurricane i need to get our water
spinning and i'm just going to use a
rubber spatula to do that
and i don't have to go super fast just
going to put my spatula in
and get the water spinning now i really
can't see it spinning too much
i'm going to let it calm down a little
bit and then we're going to zoom in
so you can see me really simply drop
some red food coloring in the water
and we're going to take a look and see
if we can see our hurricane form
so now i'm going to drop some food
coloring in and see if we can see the
swirling patterns happen
now you can see the arms of our
hurricane starting to form as the water
spins
you can see the red food coloring or our
clouds
spinning with the water that's exactly
what a hurricane does but keep in mind
it's
massive
we're going to be using this container
to create our tornado but remember
hurricanes are huge spinning storms that
form over the warm water of oceans
and they could last for days now we want
to take a closer look at tornadoes and
see how they're different
so we said that hurricanes form over the
ocean well let's take a closer look at
where tornadoes form
i have a map of the united states and
there's a part of our map on the united
states
that's called tornado alley and it's
called tornado alley because certain
times of the year
it has just the perfect conditions for
tornadoes to form
we have warm moist air coming up from
the gulf we have cold
dry air coming down from canada and we
have warm dry air coming over from the
west and when those masses of air
meet all kinds of weird things happen
to the air but it's important to point
out that tornadoes are only forming over
land we're using this container to make
our tornado because hurricanes
could be hundreds of miles wide but
tornadoes usually are around
half a mile wide so we wanted to pick a
smaller container
now i'm going to try and make our
tornado by spinning the water
to see if i can form a funnel cloud of a
tornado let's take a look and see what
happens here i go
not much is happening well that's
because the winds and tornadoes
are spinning much faster than a
hurricane hurricanes the winds might get
somewhere around 150 miles per hour but
tornadoes
those winds could get up to 300 miles
per hour and for that i'm going to need
to spin this water a whole lot faster
to make it easier for you to see our
tornado we put our container on this
light
now remember tornadoes spin faster than
hurricanes and i couldn't get the water
spinning fast enough with that rubber
spatula
so i have to use this blending tool to
see if i can get the water spinning
faster
i'm going to stick this in turn it on
and you're going to see the water start
to spin and i want you to look for the
funnel cloud of the tornado
it's going to start off really small and
thin but you'll be able to see the
funnel
and as the water starts to spin faster
our funnel's going to get
bigger let's give this a shot
here we go let's spin the water
and i can see the funnel clap the funnel
take it out and now i can see a spinning
funnel that reaches from the top down to
the bottom as the water slows down what
happens to my funnel
well it disappears and you can see the
water spinning spinning spinning much
faster than our hurricane let's get this
going again
you can see it dancing around there
now it's getting wider
i can keep it going pull it out
now to help you see it better i think
i'm going to add some glitter
and let's see what happens so i just
added some glitter and you can see it
there's kind of in the clump in the
center of our still spinning
tornado but it's spreading out in the
water let's see what happens when i get
this stuff spinning
look at what happens to the glitter
it all gets pulled into the center of
the tornado
pull this out and you can see the
glitter getting pulled into the center
of our tornado
really cool effect that really helps us
see all that spinning water
this tornado looks beautiful but in real
life they're super destructive
as well as hurricanes and that's another
reason why it's so important for
scientists to keep studying
hurricanes and tornadoes so that we can
figure out how to predict them before
they happen
but that's also another difference
between tornadoes and hurricanes
scientists can predict hurricanes a few
days out from them
forming tornadoes scientists are lucky
if they can get 15 minutes warning
before a tornado forms
if you want to learn more about
tornadoes and hurricanes or storms in
general
check out our links in the video
description science is so cool
thanks for watching i think it's time
for one more tornado
so cool
[Music]
you