Social Distance Learning Project: Cloud in a Jar

These rainy April days are a perfect time to introduce kids to the concept of weather, and this simple experiment makes it easy for them to understand. No galoshes required!

Video Tutorial: cloud in a jar

YOU’LL NEED:

A wide mouth jar, shaving cream, food coloring, a small cup, and a dropper

DIRECTIONS:

1. In a small cup, mix the food coloring with some water.

2. Fill a wide mouth jar water until it is about 3/4 full.

3. Right before the kids are ready to do the experiment, spray a bunch of shaving cream in the jar until it is just a small bit above the rim. This will be the cloud.

4. Ask the kids to pick up some colored water with a dropper and squirt it on top of the shaving cream cloud. Repeat this step one or two more times, but pay close attention to what is happening below the cloud.

5. The colored water will begin to seep down through the shaving cream and into the water below – just like rain!

THE SCIENCE BEHIND IT:

The shaving cream represents the clouds and the water represents the air. The colored water represents rain. As the colored water saturates the “cloud”, it gets heavy and eventually is so heavy that it can no longer hold the water. It “rains” down into the jar – through the “air.” It is just like when real rain falls through the air.

Sponsored by National Grid.