Hi, my name is Tassia and I'm here to talk to you today a little bit about
some of the cool experiments that you can do at home with Earth Observatory
for kids if you go to earthobservatory.nasa.gov/eokids, you can find a
bunch of articles and activities geared for kids ages 9 to 14. One of the
activities that we're going to try today with you is our cloud in a bottle
activity. You can find this one in our clouds or snow - a satellite mystery issue.
In that issue you'll find out how NASA uses satellites to determine differences
between clouds and snow because from above they both look white and we may not
know, but using specific sensors and technology, NASA is able to figure out a
lot of different things about the Earth below and find out exactly what types of
clouds are there in our sky. So today we are going to do an activity where we
make a cloud in a bottle. You need very simple ingredients. First, an empty
two-liter bottle. This one's empty. Just a little bit of rubbing alcohol and
a bicycle pump with a rubber stopper with a hole in the bottom that goes all
the way through. Or, you can also use a pin for a basketball or soccer ball or
any type of ball that you would use as the pin to blow it up. If you do that,
take a cork. If you put it in the microwave for about 15 seconds it will
expand a little bit and actually fill the hole in your two-liter bottle and
then you can take the pin and push it through all the way and then you'll be
able to use that just like this rubber stopper. So right now we are going to go
ahead and make that cloud in a bottle. So the first thing I do is I add a little
bit of rubbing alcohol, wish it around, swish, swish, swish swish. Coat the outside
of my bottle and then I take the rubber stopper
on my pump and make a really tight seal.
We want to make sure that it's really in there cause it's going to want to fly
out otherwise. This next step is probably important if you're going to do this by
yourself, eye protection. If you have a friend who's willing to sit and do it
with you, find a parent or somebody else that can really tightly hold that cork
or rubber stopper inside your 2-liter bottle,
otherwise it could fly off and hurt someone so be careful. So I'm going to
use eye protection. So here we go, first thing I'm going to make sure I hold it
nice and tight. I'm a professional so I'm sure I can do this pretty well. So we're
going to pump up our bottle with our bicycle pump, here we go. And oh, before I
start, I forgot to show you: it's really squishy right now. When I add all that
air in there it's not going to be squishy anymore, so let's see what
happens. All right I'm pumping pumping it up here we go alright let's see, should
we see how squishy it is now? Look at that, I can barely barely squish it all.
Alright, I might add just a couple more. Oh, it's getting harder to pump. Wow, this is
me getting my workout today. All right you guys ready? So, I'm going to let the
air that we just added to this bottle and inside the bottle we created a bunch
of air pressure because we added a bunch of air and it can't leave right? There's
nowhere for it to go. It's stuck inside this bottle, it's trapped underneath this
cork but when I let it go all that pressure is going to escape and when the
pressure inside the bottle decreases the temperature is also going to decrease so
it's going to get colder in there and when it gets colder the water molecules
in our air condense and that is how clouds form. Condense just means that
they get closer together so we are going to get our water molecules
in our clouds, or in our air, closer together and form a cloud. You guys ready?
So since it's NASA, we're going to count down from three. Three, two, one.
There you have it - a cloud in a bottle! Thanks for joining! You can download any other
issues and activities here at earthobservatory.nasa.gov/eokids.
Have a great day!