While learning about clouds and rain as part of a weather study, kids will love this visual hands-on rainy day experiment where they can see a little of how and why rain falls from clouds.
Rainy Day Experiment
This fun, hands-on activity works a lot like rain clouds in the sky. The weight of the liquid (food colouring) collected in the clouds (shaving cream) is what leads to rain.
With this in mind, here’s what you need to complete this experiment:
- Fill a glass with water to about an inch from the top.
- Invite your child to spray shaving cream into the glass, so that it just puffs up above the surface.
- Encourage your child to drop several drops of food coloring on the top of the shaving cream.
- Watch as it collects in the shaving cream and falls like rain.
Notes:
- We decided to not dilute our food coloring because we wanted to see instant results. Using straight food coloring produced results pretty quickly.
- You can add several drops of food coloring to water and use a pipette to transfer it to the shaving cream cloud, and it will take more time to produce the colorful rain. This is fun to try after you see immediate rain results!
Once you have tried that, repeat with different variables and see what happens.
Try this experiment by just adding a small amount of food colouring and see what happens. Can you see rain or not?
And then try adding a lot of food colouring and what do you see? A storm?
The science behind this experiment:
Clouds are formed from water vapor rising into the air and condensing onto tiny particles of dust. When these droplets come together, clouds form. Water droplets then collect in the cloud, and when the cloud becomes heavy, gravity takes over to pull the water back down to the ground in the form of rain drops.
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Frances Gabe’s Marvellous Invention
We’ve been working on a weather unit all week. My kiddos and I did this experiment this afternoon, and it was a big hit! (And fairly easy for me to set up – bonus)! Thanks for sharing this fun idea.