Free U.S. Shipping on orders $150+
Easy
30 min
A snowstorm is caused by a beautiful (if not too windy) mix of moist air, low pressure, freezing temperatures, and heavy clouds. The moist air rises up due to the wind and low pressure, hangs around in the clouds to become snow, then drops to the ground, sometimes wildly if the wind is strong enough.
They occur in most areas of the country except for the Gulf Coast and the California coast where the air never really gets cold enough.
It’s that rise up and subsequent drop of moisture we’re going to reproduce in this Waypoint. It’s quick and easy to set up if you have the right supplies and can be done over and over again, so buy that bigger pack of Alka-Seltzer tabs, gather your kids, and make a snowstorm in a bottle.
Here’s the short list of what you need:
But you have a few options.
The key part of the baby oil is the oil. We need something less dense than water that won’t mix with it. Baby oil is best since it’s clear, but any type of oil will do. The right color yellow, and your kids can imagine they’re standing under a streetlight watching the snow fall.
The point of washable paint is it’s water-based. Acrylic, tempura - as long as it mixes with water. And white to make it look like snow.
Generic antacid tablets work just as good as name brand, but make sure it’s tablet form so it'll drop to the bottom before reacting.
Then pick a clear, glass vase, jar, or bottle big enough to hold about 2 cups of liquid. Taller is better for that nice, long fall of snow.
Glitter and food coloring are totally optional and a lot of fun. Twinkle, twinkle.
Instead of using moist air and cold temps to create snow like in a real snowstorm, we’re creating ours by mixing water and paint, and then we’ll pull it up to the top with the science side of the experiment.
To make your snow, fill up your jar maybe an inch or two up with water. It depends on the size of your jar. Temperature doesn’t matter. The less you add, the more room for the storm to brew, but you still want enough to get a good storm a-brewing.
Then squirt a decent, but small, amount of your paint into the jar of water. Stir it around a bit to see if you should add more. It should mix easily since you’re using water-based paint, right? You want the water to be a nice milky color, so you can see it in the oil.
This step is completely optional and completely worth it.
To add some winter fun, we like to toss in a bit of iridescent glitter and a few drops of blue food dye. Iridescent because it sparkles without getting in the way, and blue dye because it gives a chill, icy vibe.
We like to add the glitter first, then mix it with our snow a bit. Then we add the blue dye, but we don’t mix it in, so that the blue will come out slowly in waves. It’s seriously cool.
Now we need to fill the jar with oil that will cause the snow to float up and suspend it ever-so-much as it drops back down again.
Don’t really fill it up, though. When we brew up a storm, the mixture will fizz up to the top, so you want to leave room for that mess to prevent it from spilling over.
You also want to be careful not to stir up your snow at the bottom while you fill your jar up with oil. The best way we found is using a bottle with a squirt top and slowly squirting the oil inside and down the side of the jar. We do this until the jar is ¾ filled - at most.
When your jar is filled, take note of how the two liquids sit. Oil and water are notorious for not mixing. That’s because the tiny water molecules like to stick together like little magnets grabbing onto each other even harder. Oil molecules aren’t attracted to that energy and only like to stick to other oily things.
And even though oil looks more dense, those tiny water molecules hug each other so tight, they pack in a lot more punch making it more dense, so it sits at the bottom.
Now the fun part. And arguably the easiest part. Time to gather everyone around.
Take one of your Alka-Seltzer tablets, and break it in four. We don’t want to create too much of a storm this first go-around.
Now drop 2 of those pieces into the jar and watch the storm take place! It should go on for 45 seconds or so. But how is this happening?!? Take some guesses.
The ingredients in the tablet create a chemical reaction with the water forming bubbles full of gas. Those bubbles grab a hold of your “snow” (with your glitter and blue dye) and naturally want to rise up. The molecules in the bubbles still repel the oil, so they float up past the oil. Once the bubbles reach the surface, they pop, releasing the gas (hence the fizz), and the “snow” mixture drops back down.
Best of all, because the oil and water will never mix, you can wait for the snow to settle, then drop the other half of your tablet in for round two. Take a video and share it with us!
When you’re done for the day, put the lid on and store it away, then reactivate your storm any time you like. Pop in another tablet, and watch it snow! If you run out of water at the bottom, you can just add more. It’ll sink right down, but you all know that now.
Responses
Leave a tip for other parents