How to Make a Cloud in a Bottle

Series Summary

Science describes the method of observation, analysis and discovery to help explain how things work and why things happen in the physical world. Often, the scientific method is used as a reproducible way to analyze experiments, and it includes formulating a question, researching the topic, constructing a hypothesis, experimenting, analyzing the data and drawing a conclusion. This method is taught to children at an early age to aid in problem solving and to get them interested in the world around them. In this free video series on science, a science teacher demonstrates several fun science projects that children of all ages can enjoy. Find out how to make miniature volcanoes using simple household ingredients, and create a diet soda and Mentos fountain. Build a rocket out of recycled materials, and discover how easy it is to launch it outdoors. Understand chemical reactions, physics and geometry using fun-filled science experiments.

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Colin Kilbane and I'm going to show you how to make a cloud in a bottle today. Now the first thing that you need is a juice bottle. Now this juice bottle needs to have a nice tight-fitting lid. The second thing you are going to need is a small attachment that allows you to fill up sports balls, beach balls, from a bike pump. Now the important part is the attachment for the bicycle pump here. You can use a metal or plastic. I have plastic today. You are going to need a set of fireplace matches, a bicycle pump, and you are going to need a little bit of water. Oh! And finally, my favorite, hot glue. Now, take your cap...now I've already drilled a hole in here, but you need to just be able to slide thee pump attachment up to through the cap. Now we need to seal this in. So what we're going to do on the bottom side here, we're going to put a little bit of hot glue all around it. This is going to provide us with an air-tight seal, just relatively strong. We're going to wait for this to cool down and then we're almost ready to go. While that finishes cooling down, we need to create a cloud in a bottle, so the first thing that we need is moisture. That's the water. We're going to put a little bit of water inside this and then we're going to shake it around. Just wet thee inside of the bottle, right. Pour out any remaining liquid and you can see we've got water droplets on thee inside. That's going to be enough for us. The second thing we need is something for the clouds to form on. This moisture is going to be turned into our cloud. We're going to need something to seed the clouds. Now these matches are quite long, and there's a reason you need them quite long. You want to get it going 'cause what you want here is not the flame. You want the smoke. The smoke is going to seed our cloud inside the bottle. Grab your bottle, blow out the match. You get a little bit of smoke there. Pull it out. Our cap should be reasonably cool now and ready to attach. Now, we're going to be putting molecules of air in. Tighten it up. As we pump more and more molecules of air, these molecules collide with each other, and the temperature rises. Now as the temperature rises, water is absorbed into the air. It evaporates. As you can see, it's bulging. Don't use a mechanical air pump for this. You can burst the bottle. Now, here's the trick. We've pumped a lot of air in there. The air has increased in temperature, has absorbed the water. Now we need to release a lot of that pressure very fast. That's why we're using a juice bottle instead of a pop bottle 'cause it has a wide opening here. Get a good pop here. There we go, and we get a cloud in a bottle. And that is how to make a cloud in a bottle."