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Tornado in a Bottle

Science Masterpiece

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What is a Tornado?

  • A fast spinning, funnel shaped cloud.
  • It begins in a cloud and can reach all the way to the ground.
  • The swirling wind is a mass of air around a calm center.

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Vocabulary

  • Funnel – a cone shape that narrows to a small tube at the bottom
  • Meteorologist – a scientist who studies the weather
  • Severe Weather – weather that can cause serious harm
  • Swirl – to spin in circles
  • Tornado – a violent, spinning storm
  • Vortex – a mass of spinning air, liquid, ect., that pulls things into it’s center.

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Experiment Time

Build Your Own Tornado in a Bottle

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tornado tube

bottles

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Facts About Tornadoes

  • Tornados have the strongest winds on earth, they can be up to 300 miles per hour and can be hundreds of feet wide. Fortunately, they only last a few minutes.
  • Water and debris swirling in the wind make the funnel-shaped cloud easy to see.
  • They usually occur during thunderstorms in the spring or summer.
  • Tornados are most common in Tornado Alley.

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Observation

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  • What happens when you swirl the bottle faster?
  • Does the vortex always look the same?
  • What happened to the glitter in the bottle?

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