Love Storms

Making cute love-themed tornadoes in a vase was such a fun hands on way to learn some weather related science.

Tornado in a vase!

What you need:
- glass jar or vase

- water
- dish soap
- food colouring, we used red and purple
- we also used glitter but that's optional
- something for stirring, we used a wooden spoon handle

The set up.

How it works:

Fill you jar or vase approximately 3/4 full with water. Add just one drop of food colouring- if you add too much the water becomes so dark that you cannot see the tornado effect. Mix the colour into the water using the spoon.

Add one drop of food colouring.

Watching the colour flow is mesmerising!

Stir in the colour.

If you want to add glitter do that now and give it another stir.

All kids want glitter!

Next up add a few generous squirts of dish soap.

Adding the dish soap.

Now comes the really fun part- use the spoon handle to swirl the mixture in a circular motion as fast as you can. Remember to get your child to hold on tight to the vase with the other hand!

Concentrating hard!

 You'll notice the tornado forming in the middle! Take the spoon out and watch the motion continue.

My son was completely captivated by the swirling water. I took this opportunity to explain to him the science behind the experiment. We kept it pretty simple and just talked about how the stirring motion of the spoon causes a vortex to form in the centre of the vase. As the water spins, the centripetal force causes the water to spin around the vortex which makes the tornado. I didn't expect him to fully understand but was happy that he learnt what a vortex is.

Once we finished our red love storm he was desperate to try it with purple so we repeated the process which took no time at all. This time we left the glitter out.

The purple love storm.

Such a quick and easy experiment to set up, but with awesome visual results. I loved the fact that my 4 year old was involved in every step of the experiment!