What causes storms? Can you make one at home? Well…kind of. 😉 I found an interesting experiment, which allows children to understand the reason for the formation of storms! We’re going to imagine, that the water is in fact air.
Two of the most important ingredients for thunderstorm formation are unstable air and moisture.
The action of warm air rising and cold air sinking (convection) plays a key role in the formation of severe thunderstorms.
First, pour some water in the ice cube molds, add a few drops of food coloring and freeze it. Then pour some warm water in a large (rectangular) plastic container. Add a few drops of red food coloring at one end of the container (to the opposite side of where you added blue colored ice cubes).
The blue water represents the cold air mass and the red water represents the warm and unstable air mass.
Both dyes immediately start to disperse and move together.
You’ll be able to see, how the warm water (air) is forced to rise by an approaching cold water (front), where in reality, the thunderstorms would form! 🙂
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