Tornado in a Bottle
Create your own (little) tornado in a bottle!
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Written 2 years ago
by CrazyCat
Updated 2 years ago
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| Category: | Science |
Time frame: | half an hour |
| Age: | 5-12 years |
Where: | indoor or outdoor |
| Level: | easy |
What you need: | everyday objects |
| Keywords: | tornado, water, bottle |
You need:
- Two big plastic soft drink bottles with caps
- hot glue
- file
- drill
- food color (optional)
Build Instructions:
- Empty the bottles :-) Remove the paper wrap
- Remove the caps and drill a hole in each of them (about 10mm diameter)
- Roughen up the top side of the caps (around the holes) with a file
- Now it should look like this:

- Glue the 2 caps together (see notes at the end).

- Now fill one of the bottle with water (about half full) and add food color if you like
- Put the double cap on one of your bottles
- Turn the other bottle upside down and screw it into the other end of your double cap
Create the Tornado:
- Turn the 2 bottles upside down. Only little water will flow through the hole in the caps.
- Now swirl the water around in the upper bottle
- When the tornado builds up, hold the bottle still again.
- Watch. Enjoy. Repeat.

Some Notes:
- Gluing plastic is tricky. Most glues won't work. If you do not have a special plastic glue, hot glue is the next best alternative I think. Some tips:
- Make sure the gluing area is roughened up.
- Make sure your hot glue gun is properly hot.
- Put on the hot glue quickly on one cap and the press the other cap onto the first one firmly.
- Add some extra glue around the gap the where the two caps meet
- When screwing onto the bottles, make sure the glued spot is not twisted.
- When creating the tornado, try not to bend it. Swirl the whole thing.
UPDATE:
To get around the gluing problems, I came up with the following:
- Use hot glue as described above
- When the glue is hard, fix the caps using 2 or 3 small screws around the hole
- Make sure the screw are not too close to outer edge of the caps, it will not close properly and leak then
Your caps should look like this then:
