Making Clouds: How to Make a Water Cycle Model

If you leave of cup of water on a sunny table outside, the water disappears in a
couple days. Where does it go? When water disappears, how does it get back to
us? Learn how to make a water cycle model in order to find out!

Problem:
How can the processes of cloud and rain making be recreated in the kitchen?

Mat erials
For Making Clouds:
Water
Tablespoon
Narrow necked heat resistant bottle or flask (ideally an Erlenmeyer flask)
Stove, hot plate or microwave
Thick oven mitt
Ice cube
Adult helper
For Making Rain:
Hot plate
Two identical chairs
Thick book
Metal tray (a metal ice cube tray would be perfect)
Thick oven hot mitt
Cup
12 ore more ice cubes

Procedure
Part 1Making Clouds
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Boil some water on the stove or microwave.

Let cool 30 seconds.
Ask your grown-up to measure two tablespoons of water into your narrow mouthed bottle.
Quickly put the ice cube at the mouth of the bottle
Watch what happens!

Part 2Making Rain

1. Fill the heat-resistant beaker halfway with water.
2. Pace the hotplate somewhere on the ground, unplugged. Place the beaker on the unplugged hot plate and
fill it with three tablespoons of water.
3. Set your chairs up according to the diagram below. Place a book at the edge of one chair.
4 . Place a metal tray so that its suspended between the two chairs. One edge should be elevated by the
book.
5. Fill the metal tray with ice. Place an empty cup underneath the lowest point of the tray to collect the
condensing water (if you can use another book to tilt the tray so that its lowest point is a corner of the tray,
then go for it. Place your empty cup underneath this corner instead to collect the condensing water).
6. Make sure that the hotplate and beaker are under the elevated side of the tray. Plug in and turn on the hot
plate.
7. Place the ice cubes in the metal tray.
8. Not much will happen until the water in the beaker starts to get really hot. Be patient!
9. Observe, paying special attention to the bottom of the metal pan.
10. Double check that the water is dribbling into your collecting cup. You might need to adjust its location.

Result s
In our first experiment, a cloud should have formed between the ice and hot water. In Making Rain, the steam
boiling from the beaker should have condensed, or changed back to liquid when it makes contact with the cold
metal tray. The tilt helps the newly formed water dribble into the cup.

Why?
Some of the liquid water that you heated in Making Clouds evaporat ed, or changed from a liquid to an invisible
gas called wat er vapor. The ice cooled the water vapor so that it turned into tiny water droplets, but since the
tiny droplets were so small, they remained floating in the air, forming a cloud.
In our second experiment, the boiling water became water vapor, which then condenses on the bottom of the
cold tray to become liquid water again. This time, the tiny droplets collided into each other, getting bigger and
bigger until they formed big droplets of rain. Rain is just one form of precipit at iona form of condensed water
vapor. Other forms include snow, sleet, and hail.
If the water cycle continues to fascinate you, you might build or buy a t errarium. A terrarium is small closed
container containing plants and sometimes small animals. Water evaporates within the terrarium, but condenses
on the lid, making the terrarium self-watering.