Create a giant smoke ring
The electrostatic generator
How to create a cloud in a bottle
Making a cloud in a bottle is easy if you have the right equipment. A bicycle pump and cork or rubber stopper will make an amazingly dense cloud inside a two liter bottle.
View the sun safely
The upcoming annular eclipse of 2012 won’t be visible to us in Ohio, however that dosen’t mean you still can have some fun with the sun.
As always, never look directly at the sun!
A safe and very simple way to view the sun is by making a pinhole viewer. Here is a nice description of how to make one. The Stanford Solar Center has some nice information on how to view the sun and of course NASA has a great calendar of upcoming solar events.
Hurricane Science
We hear about hurricanes every year, but how do hurricanes work? Most hurricanes that form in the Atlantic Ocean start as thunderstorms off the coast of Africa. As they travel across the tropical waters around the equator, they pick up moisture and energy, eventually crashing into land where they quickly fall apart.
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How much water does the earth have?
With all the rain we’ve had lately, it may seem like the earth is made completely of water. In some ways, it is. We have oceans, lakes, rivers, and even water squeezed into tiny pockets in rock and clay. An oceanographer in Hawaii has recently been trying to estimate just how much water the earth has. His conclusion? Water makes up less than 0.1% of the mass of the Earth. Read more
Ping Pong Ball Cannon
Using just air pressure – not compressed air – you can accelerate a ping pong ball to amazing speeds. Fast enough to rip through a soda can.
The cannon is a long PVC tube loaded up with a ping pong ball. To fire it off, both ends are sealed with a single layer of clear tape. Next, a vacuum pump is used to remove most of the air from the cannon tube. When the tape nearest the ball is ripped open (punctured by a knife) 14.7 pounds per square inch of air pressure rushes in and slams into the ball. With no air molecules in front of the ball, it can accelerate to speeds of nearly 300 miles per hour.
Of course if the ball does not rip through the can, you can always rip a soda can in half this way.
Floating bag of hot air
The space bag is a very thin black tube that you fill with air on a sunny day. As the bag warms in the sun the air inside also warms and slightly expands. Just like a hot air balloon, the bag begins to rise. Read more
A vacuum-packed person
We live in a ocean of air, in fact, we live at the bottom of that ocean of air. All those miles of air above us end up exerting a force of about 14.7 pounds over every square inch of our bodies. We take it for granted since the force per area (pressure) is the same all around us. Things start to get interesting when there is an imbalance in that pressure. What better way to find out what an imbalance in pressure feels like than to vacuum-pack WTVG-13 weekend anchor Christina Williams? Read more
Frozen flowers for Mother’s Day
Is there a better way to celebrate Mother’s Day than to freeze some flowers in liquid nitrogen? Probably, but flash freezing flowers and then watching them break like glass is pretty cool. Read more
Some people are calling it “Snowpocalypse”
Check out these NASA images of what they are calling one of the largest storms to hit the US since the 1950′s. NOAA also has a great image to give you a sense of the size of the storm taken with the GOES-13 satellite. Some are calling the huge storm a “snowpocalypse“, while others are saying, “This is not a typical winter storm, this is one for the history books,” – Thats from Edward Fenelon, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Romeoville, Ill. How much snow did you get? Let us know in the comments below.
