Ever lived through a weather inversion where the air is dirty and hard to breathe? This experiment will help you explain to your children how an inversion works.
Difficulty: Easy
Time Required: 10 minutes
Here's How:
- Fill two narrow mouth quart or pint jars with warm tap water and two with cold tap water. The water should be close to the top of each jar.
- Put yellow food coloring in the warm water bottles and blue food coloring in the cold water bottles.
- Place an index card over the mouth of one of the warm water bottles, and the invert the bottle and the card over the mouth of one of the cold water bottles. Match the mouths so they are precise and then remove the index card.
- Follow the same procedure with the two other bottles except that the cold water bottle should be on top.
- Record your results. Explain that the density of the water, like air, varies with temperature. When the cold water jar is on top, the more dense cold water will sink and the warm water, which is less dense, will rise mixing together. If the warm water jar is on top, the less dense warm water will stay on top and the "heavier" cold water will stay on the bottom and will not mix.
- Explain that a weather inversion occurs when warmer temperatures exist at a higher altitude than the cooler air. When that happens, the cooler, denser air is trapped below the warmer air and they cannot mix. Thus, all the pollution generated on the ground is trapped with the cooler air and stays at the lower altitude.
What You Need
- Two narrow mouth pint or quart glass jars
- Yellow and blue food coloring
- Warm and cold tap water
- Two index cards or playing cards
