24/06/2014: What a scorcher!

Working towards an arts award

I think that most of us will agree that recently the temperature has been fairly high, perhaps uncomfortably high for some. Today was no exception and there was a definite feeling of lethargy at our group.

One industrious girl sprawled her artwork across multiple tables and spent a couple of hours working hard towards her arts award, putting the rest of us to shame. Instead we did a lot of relaxing, chatting and playing. Not a bad way to spend a day.

Playing on the games console

The one activity we did focus on was how clouds are created. The Met Office have an easy experiment here that we tried. We poured hot water (not boiling!) in to a jam jar and left it for a minute to warm through. A large block of ice was wrapped in a plastic bag and placed over the top of the glass. You need to watch closely but hopefully you will observe wisps of cloud moving inside - they can be very hard to spot. What is happening is that the warm, humid air hits the cold air at the top and condenses into tiny water particles that we see as cloud.

To make it more visible you can spritz some aerosol into the jar (doesn't matter which, we used hairspray) and then cover the top again with the ice. The particles in the aerosol provide a nucleus around which water particles can build up hopefully creating a better looking cloud.

I must admit that our clouds were not great so we cheated by using a third method. I have an old high pressure air rocket kit that we used for this. A small amount of surgical spirit was poured into a plastic bottle and swirled around. The lid (which had an adapter in it from the kit) was put on and, using a bike pump, we increased the air pressure inside the bottle until it felt firm. When the lid was removed the sudden change in air pressure allowed the molecules to rapidly expand, this makes the temperature go down and causes a cloud effect. I don't have any footage of us doing it but this video below uses the same technique.

And another video showing a simpler method, I think that you need pretty strong hands for this one but it's easy to replicate at home.

And next time...

01/07/2014 Our next session is a helter skelter one. Meet up at the hall for some disorganised chaos!