 Hello everybody. Welcome to Super Science Saturday or welcome back if you've been with us for some of our presentations this morning. We are coming to you from our homes instead of from our beautiful NCAR Mesa Lab in Boulder, Colorado, where normally this is an in-person event. But the whole point of the day today is that science is everywhere. You don't have to be in a lab to be doing science. So we have our scientists calling in from all over the place today to show you some cool experiments and some demonstrations. So right now, if you happen to have seen Mike Nelson in the last presentation, a chief meteorologist for Denver Channel 7 News, he was talking to us a little bit about weather and climate. And it was a perfect lead into our next demonstration where we're going to actually explore warm air and colder and what they do. Some of you may have gathered materials. If you saw the information on our webpage, this is something that you can do along with us. If you gathered a couple of materials like a small plastic water or soda bottle and some tubs of hot and cold water and some dish soap. So one other thing, we love questions. And throughout this presentation and any of the presentations, if you want to enter some questions in, we're using the Slido platform. And you will basically just scroll down underneath the to the bottom of your screen and you'll see a place where you can enter questions in as we go and we'll answer those at the end. So I'm going to turn it over to my colleague Tim, who's going to explore warm and cold air with you. Thanks, Tiffany. And like Tiffany said, if you do have the materials ready, you can do this along with me. But just to set it up. We're excited to have all you're here today and we'll get started with that with our activity. We're going to be exploring how air behaves when it changes temperature. And then we'll connect that to the way some clouds form and if you saw Mike Nelson, and there's going to be more clouds later and more about air. So this is part of what happens in our atmosphere. So, why don't we just get started. First of all, take a look at your bottle. And I have my bottle here. And I guess our science question is, is there anything in there. And I'm going to let you think about that for just a second. I have an answer. Can we send, can you send that to us on the slide? Oh, what you think is in there. I'm looking over at the answer screen. Oh, the slide of screens up. And we'll wait, I'll wait and see if anyone does actually put an answer in there. And the question again is, is there anything in your bottle, when you hold it up, or when you look inside of there. We don't have any answers that seems like right now everybody's just watching. Okay, so it looked empty, but it's actually full of air. Just like everything else air is made up of tiny molecules, and they're so small that we can't see them. But molecules take up space. So the air inside your bottle is invisible. But they, those molecules are also taking up space inside that bottle. Now, what the air molecules in our bottle do when they get warm or cold. And if you have the materials, you can do this along with me. First, dip the mouth of your bottle into the soapy solution mine is right here. I can just barely scoop up I can probably see that. And if you take dish soap make sure there's a little bit of water in there. And dip it into the into the mouth of the bottle, so that you have a soap bubble over the mouth. I'm going to hold that and maybe I could look and see if you can see what I'm seeing. And there should be a little bubble glinting off of the opening of the mouth of my bottle you should see some, if you were doing it you can get on your bottle as well. And if it pops I'll just dip back in here and get some more soap as we do this demonstration. So the first thing I'm going to do is put the bottle the base of the bottle then my bubble on there we put the base of my bottle into a tub of hot water. And in rehearsal, everyone could see that bubble. You can't see I'm going to hold it up in front of the camera. Maybe you can see that. But on my special, you can see the bubble shirt. It's black and the light shining through there. Okay, so my bubble popped, and we are going to put our, well, we're going to do the experiment. And we're also going to put the bottle the bubble into the tub of cold water. So this is my tub of cold water. But the first thing I'm going to do. And again if you're doing this at home first go to a coffee bottle and then dip it into the hot water tub. So you see your bubble coming up and then slide it and drop it down into the tub of cold water. And watch what happens. And there it's going down into the neck of the bottle it's still dropping I know you might not be able to see it I put my finger where it is. It's right down at the bottom of the bottle. If I set it back into the hot water, it comes up bubble again. It comes back out of the top. And then it popped. So I'll do it a couple more times you can watch. Start with a soapy soapy top. Put it into the hot. Put it into the cold water tub. Disappear they go back into the hot water tub. And it starts to climb out. And you might be wondering. What made the bubble do that. I remember the tiny invisible air molecules that we talked about the hot water heats up those air molecules, and the air gets warmer. Those air molecules start to spread out because they've got so much energy, they expand inside the bottle. And when the model molecules expand they take up more space and make the bubble grow bigger because the only way out of this bottle is to come right out of the top of the bottle. And then, when I move the bottle into the cold water. The bubble moves down into the neck of the bottle, because the cold water cools the air in the bottle and as the air gets cooler, those air molecules, huddle close together, which is also called contraction. And the colder the air molecules need those cold air molecules need less space so they sink down into the bottom of the bottle. And that's why the bubble behaves that way. So just to be sure the scientists do lots of experiments will do another one. And we'll leave it in here to see how big a bubble we can get. Let's see I boiled some water let's see if we can make a bigger potter water. Ah, so look at that. I don't know my bottle. Oh, we'll try one more time get a nice big bubble. We'll go back into the cold water, a little turbo charge of hot water there. We'll go back into the cold. And this time you may be able to see it I'm not sure if you can see it dropping down in that's all the way down here. We'll go back into the hot water. And it's coming up if it stays together. So those air molecules warm up and pick up our space they're moving up. Not sure if they're going to come all the way to the top of the bottle. Okay, we'll set that down. And since we like that fun with our demos. Now, I'm going to take my bottle out of the water. If I could, we're just, I'm going to ask that you do this at your, at your home. And we're going to practice demonstrating this with our bodies. And so imagine your body is your bottle, your, your body is a ball, a bottle, and you dip your bottle into the warm soapy water and your hands are like the soap bubbles should demonstrate this I can't really see you but that's fine Travis at home. Pretend that your bubble is growing in the hot water, and you can even stand up and expand if you need to. You can finger it out, let them flex them wiggle them, get it out of your system. And then, as you step into the cold water, imagine those air molecules, taking up less space as they contract and don't move around very much. And then you can like, even huddle down into small ball. And you might wonder, what does this have to do with weather? And we are going to observe, we're going to actually show you a couple of pictures and those pictures will help you understand what it is, how this connects to weather. And as soon as we get them, we're going to bring up those pictures and as soon as you can see those. And I'll just ask for a heads up when I know those, when you can see those pictures or somebody there can let me know and oh, I see them here come the pictures. And then we'll start off with how this connects to the, what we see outside in their atmosphere so during the day the sun rises and gets higher into the sky, and it begins to warm the earth so those yellow lines you see the arrows are warming up the earth. And then in the next slide what you'll see is that the earth surface, that's hard to say the earth surface warms up from the sun's heat and the air above it also warms. This warm air expands just like the air did in your, in the bottle, warm high bottle, and it begins to rise high into the atmosphere, those squiggly lines that you see show that the air is rising. And then in the next slide, as the air rises higher it cools, and when it cools the water in the air condenses to form clouds. That happens all the time that's what makes clouds form is the water that's in that rising air condenses, and they make up small water droplets but as the clouds continue to grow and more warm air rises up into the atmosphere and cools. The clouds get bigger and bigger. And if the water droplets or ice crystals in the clouds become heavy enough, they eventually start to fall to the earth as precipitation, and this can be rain, or snow, or if it's a really vigorous storm, I'm going to be able to show you this one. Hail. And yes, everybody, this is a copy of a hail storm because a real one melted. But can you imagine what kind of storm would cause, like that thunderstorm that you see right now. That's the kind of storm that can form hail and lightning. And if you see this, that's what we call severe weather, and, and hail. And I'm going to set that down for just a second to see if we have some questions about whether I don't want to keep going until and not let anybody ask any questions but that's the basics because the sun comes out, heats up the ground, the warm air expands, takes up space, and as it gets up high enough, the water in that air condenses to form the clouds and if the clouds get heavy enough with moisture, that moisture comes back out. Okay. Awesome. Tim, did you notice today that I'm wearing my cloud earrings? Look at that. Because we're talking about weather a lot this afternoon, aren't we? Wait, I think I know what kind of cloud. I'm gonna look into my cloud library over here. Oh, oh, okay. Let's see. Could they be the cumulus cloud that I'm holding out? Is that what they're doing? It does look a bit like it, doesn't it? I'd say they're cumulus clouds. Yay, they're cumulus. Okay, I think we do have some questions. So, if you're ready to take some questions, actually, here's a technical question about doing this in case anybody either had got to do it at home or if you'd like to try it on your own at a different time. Danny was wondering, do you need a special dish soap to make sure that it doesn't pop? No, you do not need to. But soap is all you need in a soap bubble, so some dish soaps are really super concentrated, so you might have to add a little bit more water. We have biodegrader, you can't even see it because there's no coloring or anything in it. And this dish soap isn't as concentrated, so I didn't have to add too much water, but any dish soap will work. Put a little bit of water in it so it's not super thick, but it's also kind of slimy with that soap in there, so any soap will work. Super. And somebody else is asking, Tim, how do ice clouds form? This is from Joey, who's six years old and joined us today. Thanks, Joey. Thanks, Joey. Yeah, so ice clouds form when the temperature of the atmosphere is of the atmosphere or the part of the atmosphere where the water is, is below zero, sorry, zero Celsius, 32 degrees Fahrenheit, which is the point at which water freezes, and water vapor will turn into ice. So anywhere in the atmosphere where the temperature is below that freezing point, if there's water and a little tiny piece of dust, a cloud nucleation particle, anything that the water condenses on, then that causes ice clouds to form, and they can form above water clouds. So if you see clouds like this, where there's a clearly defined space between the sky and the cloud, that cloud's made out of water. But if it's diffuse, sort of, I don't know how many diffuse clouds close by, but if you ever see those clouds that are kind of spread out, those are going to be your ice clouds in that part of the atmosphere. The temperature is below that freezing point, and there were some dust available, just like the smoke from the fires that we had here out in the western part of the United States, you will see ice clouds. And Tim, to kind of go off of that, is this the only way that clouds form, the way that you described with the hot and cold air rising and sinking? Oh, clouds form in lots of different ways. This is just one of those ways. And we have an incredible meteorologist coming on in just a minute. And he can tell you all kinds of different ways that clouds, well, I think he can tell you all kinds of different ways that other clouds will form. So it's not just, this is not the only way that clouds will form. That's right. Our next episode coming up is called Extreme Cloud Formation. So it's going to be perfect following this. Yeah, I'm the opening act. So we have a question about hail. How often do hail storms happen and what time of year do hail storms happen? Thank you for the question. The hail storms will happen more than likely in the spring, early summer, or late summer as there's enough cold air aloft in order to freeze the water that gets pushed up into the atmosphere quickly. And in this picture, there's some, this is a thunderstorm building and the air that's inside of this could be going up to 100 miles per hour. And in the summertime, if there's in the springtime, sorry, there's still cold air aloft below freezing and that water can go up and form. So it's possible to get hail. Many times during the spring and the fall, some places like Colorado are going to have it more frequently just because we are higher in elevation. We have lots of, we're closer to where the air is very cold. And so we will see hail all throughout the west more frequently in the spring and the summer, spring and late summer. And I think, does that answer the question? Yeah, that's great. And usually, luckily, the hail, when we do get it here in Colorado, isn't as big as the one that you showed, right? It's more. Yes. Our air is not quite as moist as places like Oklahoma or Texas. And this actual hail storm fell in Coffeeville, Kansas. This is a copy of it. You can see the crystals that formed on the top, it's round on the bottom. And in 1970, this was the world record, but that record was broken by a hail storm in Aurora, Nebraska, and then again in Vivian, South Dakota, and in the South America, they have a hail storm that's even larger than this. And again, you need more moisture than we might have available in Colorado. That's a scary hailstone. There is, ooh, this is a tricky one, Tim. Checho and Kai and Amaya are wondering how fast can lightning strike? How fast? Yeah, how fast can lightning strike? Well, let's see, it depends on, well, we've got the speed of light here. So if you can run faster than the speed of light, you can outrun it. If you can't run 186,300 and I think 60 miles per second, it will get you. And the average both the lightning somewhere around three miles long. So if you're within three miles of a thunderstorm or there's lightning, you're close enough that you probably won't be able to run fast enough, even though you're pretty fast, Kai. All right, well, it looks like that is all the questions I'm seeing. We are having some comments. People really seem to have enjoyed the experiment. And again, it's something that you can try at home. If you remember what Tim did, all it takes is some hot water and some cold water and a plastic bottle and a little bit of dish soap doesn't have to be any special kind. And you can experiment with that as well. So if the water does not have to be boiling, I can put my hand in there and it's like your bathtub before it gets really comfortable. And over here, I've got a lot of ice cubes in here added a little bit of salt to make the water get even colder than it normally would. But that's pretty much it. Nothing special. Just make sure there's a big difference between the temperature of the cold and the temperature of the hot. Okay, maybe some of you will go out and try it after this. Thanks so much, Tim. That was so much fun. That was a really cool experiment. And we now, if anybody, I know we've got some weather fans that have been here for the last couple of presentations and we're going to take a quick break. So coming up at one o'clock is going to be extreme cloud formation with another one of our scientists. So if you're into this talk about weather and clouds, hang on or join us back again in a few minutes. And thanks for joining us everybody and thank you Tim. Thank you, Tiffany. See you soon. Bye bye.