Winter weather fun

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Winter weather fun

Try these cold weather experiments

With extreme low temperatures gripping the eastern half of the United States and Canada, several cities and towns have cancelled school for the day; leaving parents with youngsters stuck indoors — a recipe for cabin fever.

For those looking to keep their kiddos occupied, there’s a way to use the extreme cold for some entertainment (and sneak in a little science education, too). Here’s a few fun experiments that can be done with just a little time outdoors (make sure to bundle up!), from making frozen soap bubbles to creating your own colorful snow. (There’s also one experiment to make sure the little ones don’t try.)

Frozen bubbles

Kids love bubbles. And while summer is typically the time to crack open a bottle of bubbles, there’s a way to make them work in the winter. If it’s cold enough outside (temperatures below about 9 to 12 degrees Fahrenheit, or about minus 11 degrees Celsius), you can make the bubbles freeze. The trick is to blow them up in the air so that they have time to freeze before hitting the ground or another surface. The bubbles will form crystalline patterns and some might break, looking a bit like the shell of a cracked egg. Don’t have any bubble solution handy? There are simple home recipes, any laundry soap or dish washer soap, or even hand washing soap will do.

Maple syrup candy

Do just like Half Pint do in the “Little House on the Prairie” books and makes your own maple syrup candy. Just heat butter and syrup together, according to this recipe, and after it cools, you can pour it onto fresh snow and it will harden into something like maple taffy. Yum!

Magic balloons

Okay, so maybe they’re not magic, but they will seem that way to the kids, and this one is quite easy. Just inflate and tie up a balloon, then stick it outside and watch it deflate. Bring it back inside to warm up and watch it re-inflate. (This is a nice lesson in the volume of a gas, in this case, air volume, changes with temperature, shrinking in the cold, as its density increases, and expanding in the heat, as its density decreases.

Turn water into snow

Playing around with boiling water in cold, windy conditions may not be the smartest way to spend the day. That said, the result could be spectacular if there is a large enough of a temperature difference between the air and water, with best results occurring once air temperatures dip to minus 30 F (minus 34 C) or below.

Here’s how boiling water “magically” turns to snow: Cold air is very dense, meaning its molecules are scrunched close together, leaving little room for water vapor molecules. When you throw boiling water into that chilly, dry air, there’s no place for those water droplets to go.

Soda slushy anyone?

Alcohol and soda will transform to a slushy almost magically in the extreme cold.

The trick is simple: Just take a soda or an alcoholic beverage out in the snow in a sealed bottle and let it cool for a few hours, then open it up and watch the slush form.

Normally, pure water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit (0 degrees Celsius). But the added ingredients in soda or alcohol lower the freezing point, making the beverage liquid at supercool temperatures. Opening the soda bottle lowers the pressure inside and releases tiny bubbles of carbon dioxide that serve as the seeds for tiny ice crystals, forming a frosty and delicious slush. The technique also works with alcohol or mixed drinks, because opening the bottle is still usually enough to seed the tiny ice crystal formation.

Be careful not to make the beverage too boozy, though. Pure alcohol freezes at a frigid minus 173 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 114 degrees Celsius), so the stronger the alcohol, the colder it will need to be outside for the trick to work.

Glass and aluminum tend to work better than plastic bottles, and anecdotal reports suggest that diet sodas, which don’t have any sugar content, can sometimes yield less-than-stellar results.

http://library.thinkquest.org/CR0215477/48_things_to_do_in_the_snow.htm

http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2014/01/things_to_do_on_snowy_day_kids_indoor_activities.html

http://handsonaswegrow.com/10-outdoor-snow-activities-giveaway/