2News Weather Team Creates Indoor Tornado at Discovery Lab

TULSA, Okla. — The education team at Discovery Lab hosted the 2News Weather Team for hands-on demonstrations of weather phenomena using liquid nitrogen. Claire Young, assistant education director, explained how the difference in temperature between the air and the liquid nitrogen can cause some interesting things to happen to every day objects.

We showcased that first as we took a large cylindrical balloon and placed it directly into the liquid nitrogen tub. This caused the balloon to shrink as the air rapidly cooled inside the balloon. This demonstrates how air becomes more concentrated and denser as the air molecules slow their movement at colder temperatures. Once the balloon is brought out of the tub, it starts to return to its original form as the air returns to the surrounding air temperature.

In our second experiment, we poured liquid nitrogen directly into a clear, glass beaker and watched it boil at -321°F. The steam was then funneled into a narrow copper straw allowing a geyser of steam to form. The rapid injection of cold air into the environment even cause water to condense and create small raindrops indoors!

Finally, the liquid nitrogen was poured directly onto the floor surrounded in a circle by fans. The air circulation present from this fan arrangement then became apparent as steam from the liquid nitrogen expanded upward. In effect, a weak tornado was created.

Watch the video to see all three experiments performed by the Weather Team!

While these experiments cannot be replicated safely at home, Discovery Lab uses liquid nitrogen for a variety of in-house experiments shown to visitors from time to time. For more on Discovery Lab programming, click here.