- What time is it? It's science time. ♪ One, two, three, four, here we go ♪ ♪ Learn so much your brain explodes ♪ ♪ Beat so big you'll lose your breath ♪ ♪ It's, it's science time ♪ ♪ It's fun, you'll best believe ♪ ♪ Explore and learn new things ♪ ♪ Come and join me please ♪ I'm Mr. C in this super smart
group is my science crew. Lyla is our notebook navigator. Alfred is our experiment expert. Rylee is our dynamite demonstrator and London is our research wrangler. Working with my team is the be
st and makes learning so much fun. Actually, you should join us. Today we're talking about convection. What time is it? It's science time. Welcome back to DIY Science Time. My name's Mr. C and I'm so glad that you're here to be part
of our science crew today. We are talking about convection today. That's right, convection. And what inspired this
was this cup of tea. I wanted to make some tea
and when I turn on my kettle, I started to notice something. Check it out. This is so cool. You can actua
lly see the hot water rising and then it's coming over
and then it's settling. This is a convection current and I know what you're thinking. Mr. C, it's actually so difficult to see what's going on because
the water is transparent. Well, guess what? I've got some amazing, amazing experiments that
we're gonna try today to let you see convection in action. First, you need to gather some materials. Alfred, let them know what we need. - Make sure you have
the following materials to experiment along
with the crew. Fish tank or clear
container, an ice cube tray, blue and red food coloring, a small cup, and best of all, your moving
and grooving science notebook. - A science notebook is a tool that every scientist should have and it gives us a place to
record all of our learning. Taking good notes and being organized allows us to be better scientists. A science notebook allows us to go back and review all the data and information we've gathered
during our experiments. Plus, it allows us to sha
re results with other scientists
who might be interested in learning more about
what we've discovered. Whenever you see the notebook pop up on the screen like this, it's a reminder that this is a good place for us to jot down new information. You can see I've already added a title and a list of materials
for today's activity. Our crew is still going to
have lots of information to collect and organize as we go through the experiment, so
keep your notebook handy. Most importantly, the more
you use
the science notebook, the better you'll get at taking
notes and recording data. If you don't have a science notebook yet, download a copy of Mr.
C's science notebook from the website. - We're building our very
own convection aquarium. First thing we need to do is make some ice and we want our ice to actually be blue so I have some food coloring,
some water, some drops, a stir stick. And now we're gonna fill this up. We need to get this into the freezer, but we also need to fill
up our container
with water so here is our first half gallon. We're gonna need more water for sure. So our fish tank or should I say convection aquarium is filled about three
quarters full of water. We have our ice cubes that have been in the
freezer for quite some time. I'm going to pop those out. Just set that aside. Now we're gonna have ice cubes and we're gonna place them into
the tank up top right here. And because ice cubes are ice, they float. And then I'm going to fill this with hot water and I'm gonna
make it red to represent hot. I'm gonna pour that into there. We're gonna put a couple of
drops of red food coloring. So I'm gonna put the ice cubes in first. And our job here is to
simply observe what happens. Stay over here, buddy. Whoa, and then I'm going to place this in the water over here. Try to keep this over here. We're gonna see what happens. Gonna add a few more ice cubes. And now we wait. Oh, that's so cool. You can actually see the blue is falling and the red is rising. The cold wat
er is more dense than the water around
it, so it begins to fall. The warm water out of our other container is warmer so it begins to rise. As you can see where we are with the tank, there's a definitive line
up top with red water. That's because this is warmer water and the warmer water is less dense. Now we can also see on
the bottom of the tank or we saw before, it's
really, really blue. That's because the colder
water is more dense and it sank to the bottom. What was happening over time
is th
e hot water was coming up and then it was meeting the
cold and it started to cool and then it started to fall
and it started to go back over and we have this convection current. This is our first example
of convection today and I hope you give this experiment a try. Convection refers to how fluids move. We can see a convection current
occur in this tank of water. The warmer water has more kinetic energy, which means those molecules
are able to move faster and spread apart further. This makes the
warm water less dense than the surrounding cold water. As the warm water rises, the colder water, which is more dense, sinks into the area where the warm water originally was. This continuation of
the warmer water rising and the cooler water
sinking is a perfect example of a convection current. - Did you know that hot air balloons are another great example
of convection at work? - So we're here at Gentle Breeze Hot Air
ballooning in Lebanon, Ohio. We're actually gonna be going
up in the air her
e in a bit. I cannot wait to explore
air from way up there. Hey everybody, we're here
at Warren County Airport in Lebanon, Ohio and
I'm with Mark Weissman who is going to be my pilot
in the hot air balloon. Mark, how are you today? - Good, how are you? - I'm doing great, I'm a little nervous, but talk to me about a hot air balloon. How does it actually work? - [Mark] As you can see
behind us, there's a basket and then there's the balloon,
which is called the envelope and we are going to fill
it
up with cold air. - This is so cool. All that air is filling up this balloon! - [Mark] And once that cold
air fills the balloon up, we will heat it up, heat that air up and that's what causes it to rise. We are in a balloon
that's 69,000 cubic feet so to get a perspective, if you
were to turn it upside down, you could fit 69,000 basketballs in it. - So we're actually up in the air flying. Every time we want to raise and go higher in this balloon,
we give the burner a pull. So we've been flying
f
or about a half an hour and we're coming in for a landing here, and we are literally scraping
the dirt intentionally. We're just super low to the ground. This is so amazing to be able
to fly, to make adjustments with a pull of a lever to heat up more air and create lift and cause
that air to become less dense than the surrounding air, it's amazing. We're coming in for a landing. - We're gonna bounce a couple times. - We got it, we got it,
we're on the ground. - We're just landing. - For this nex
t experiment, you'll need two plastic cups,
water, and an index card. You might wanna work over a catch pan just in case the water spills. Carefully fill one glass with warm water and add a drop of red food coloring. Fill the second glass with ice water and add a drop of blue food color. Place the index card
into the cold water cup and turn it upside down. Surface tension should
hold the card in place and prevent the water from spilling out. Carefully place the cold water cup on top of the warm
water cup and gently pull the card
from in between the two cups. Watch what happens to the water. The two colors mix to make purple. Now try it again. But this time, place the card
onto the warm water first. Carefully turn the warm cup upside down and balance it on the cold water. Gently pull the card out to
see what happens this time. It doesn't mix. This happens because the
hot water is less dense than the cold water. The hot water wants to rise and the cold water wants to sink so they don't m
ix this time. This fun little science
trick is a great way to illustrate how the
water behaves differently when it has different amounts of energy. - Convection, convection,
convection, convection cell. That's right, I 3D printed this little box because I wanted to see
if we could see convection in a different way using some smoke. So what I have here is a
little box I 3D printed. I have a candle over here in the corner. We're gonna light that and then we're going to
close the box just like that
. So we have a heat source on
this side of the of the box and we don't have a heat
source on this side of the box. Now I also have some incense. And this incense, when you light it, it produces a really nice smell. This one is lavender, but
it also produces smoke. And as you can see, the smoke is rising. But what happens if I bring the smoke over
to my convection cell? Some of it rises, but a lot of it is being sucked down into the cell. And this is because of
the convection current that's takin
g place within the cell. The candle's heating up the air on this side and the hot air is rising. The cold or cooler air over here is being pulled down into
the area of lower pressure and then we have this cell
and this current taking place, the convection current's happening. It's pretty cool. And with the smoke, it allows us to actually
see what's happening. And while I'm talking, I'm disrupting the smoke right here so trying to talk like
this so not to mess it up, but we can literally see
the
smoke coming down, being pulled over and
coming out the other tube. So there you have it. That is a convection cell and it allows us to illustrate
convection using smoke, and it smells good. - That water experiment from
Rylee was so unexpected. I made a note that we observed
similar convection patterns with the fish tanks,
cups, and convection cell. Always remember, if you're
working with open flames, you should always have an adult
there to help and supervise. Science safety is the name of the
game. - Nothing like a nice cool
breeze on a hot summer day. But did you know that
there is some science to why wind can help you cool down? Place your hands in front of the fan. The cool air moving through
your fingertips feels nice. Now dip your hand in water and place it in front of the fan too. Does one hand feel colder than the other? The hand that is wet should
feel cooler than the dry hand. This cooling sensation
is because the air moving across your wet hand causes
the water to evaporate
. The water pulls heat energy from your hand as it evaporates, leaving
your skin feeling cool. - You wanna talk about keeping your cool? Here's a cool fact. Our body has about 2.6
million sweat glands. Sweat is made up of water and other minerals called electrolytes. When our body senses an
increase in temperature, it jumps into action to
get those sweat glands to produce sweat in our skin so convection can do its
job and cool you down. So if you start sweating, don't sweat it. Your body has it
all under control. - This convection spinner is a really interesting
experiment demonstration. And why is it so interesting? Well, we know that flame is hot. Flame burns out about
1200 degrees Fahrenheit. That hot air is rising. As it's rising, it's going straight up and
it's pushing the slanted part sort of like the slide out of the way. And that push as it rise up is causing this to spin and
to spin over and over again. Now, you might be saying,
How do I make one of these? Well, I'm going to s
how you, but first things first, science safety. That's right, because
we're working with flame, you should have an adult
with you who is able to watch and observe and be close there just in case something were to happen. We don't wanna be playing with flame at all without
adult supervision. Let me blow this out so that we can stay focused on
what we actually need to do. We're gonna let that smoke dissipate and while it's dissipating, I'm
gonna take this masking tape and I'm going to draw a
circ
le on my aluminum foil. Identify the center, and
then I'm just going to make a spiral all the
way out, just like that. Now you're gonna take your foil and you're gonna cut out a square around your circle just so
that it's easier to start with. And now I'm gonna cut out my circle. I'm cutting on the inside of the line instead of the outside. And when you get to the
top, you can kind of stop. There we go, just like that. So I'm gonna take this one off and I'm gonna show you how we set this up. So
here's our candle. I took a skewer stick and I actually just put
it next to the candle and I kind of just gently
bent it over this way because the heat from the
candle is rising straight up. So we want our convection
piece to slide over it just like that. Now it's a little bit long so what I'm going to do is
I'm actually going to cut off just the smallest part and then I'm going to kind of crease it so it kind of bends
upwards just like this. And we're just gonna see if it works. Let's give it a
try. But I think the top here is not working. And there you go. A convection carousel. It's a really simple design and it works really, really well and it's all about convection. That hot air is rising, it's
pushing the slanted part out of the way, and because
it's pushing it into spiral, it keeps spinning and
spinning and spinning. And just one more reminder, this experiment needs to be
done with adult supervision. - I have another fun
experiment to show what happens to air on Earth's surface
as it is heated. Place a clear plastic container
onto four styrofoam cups. Fill the container with
water, and allow it to settle so it does not move at all. The water is going to
represent air molecules. Carefully take a pipette
and place red food coloring into the center of the container. Be careful not to mix the water. Now carefully place blue
food coloring on each side of the red food coloring. The red will represent the warming air, and the blue will
represent the colder air. Once a contain
er is set
up, place a styrofoam cup filled with hot water directly
under the red food coloring. The hot water represents
the uneven heating of the earth's surface. As the hot air rises, it's
creating a area of low pressure. We can see the blue food coloring, which represents cold air,
begins to move into the area of low pressure. This is a great way to
represent convection, which creates an air movement or wind. - Convection, convection, convection. Convection, convection, convection. Convection
, convection, convection. - I've got another experiment for you. This time we're going to use a hot plate and some aluminum pie pans
to make convection cells. Now you're going to
need this special stuff. This is called soap, soap, soap. And the soap you're looking for has a very shiny property to it. So you can see here it's like really shiny and it's almost like pearly. This is what you are looking for. And so the experiment you're going to do is actually looking for
and finding the best soap t
o make the convection cells in the pan. So this is part of the process,
and this is half the fun is figuring out what soap works best. Now, first thing you need
to do is add some water to your pan. We're gonna add some soap. Oh, that's a whole different episode. Now you're gonna swish it around. And I need way more soap than that. There we go. And what we wanna do is
make this mixture homogenous which means we want to
get it nice and mixed up so that we can see no clumps in there. We want it to
be nice and smooth. So you're gonna work to get that mixed up. You're gonna notice I'm doing
this away from the hot plate. I'm not mixing this with my
fingers over the hot plate. Science safety is important. Now, this is something
you're going to wanna do with a family member or a
crew member that is older and responsible because
you're gonna be working with a little bit of
heat with this hot plate. I'm gonna put just a
little bit more soap in. I want it to be really translucent, so I want it to
be nice and cloudy. I don't want the light coming through, I don't wanna see the bottom of the pan. I just want to be able to see the soap. And you can see that the
water has that shiny, shimmery quality to it as well. So I think it's almost
mixed up the way I want it. I'm gonna lift this up really carefully. Set it onto the burner. And now I'm going to turn it on medium. And now I have to wait and wait and wait. So it might be hard to see it, so I'm gonna add a drop of food coloring. The food
coloring begins
to move on its own. That's because of convection. The food coloring eventually
moves through the entire pan, allowing us to see the
individual convection cells. Each convection cell is a zone
where there is upward motion of warmer fluid in the
center, and a downward motion of cooler fluid at the edges of the cell. We can see lots of
convection cells in this pan. I also wanted to try it
with different colors. This yellow allows me to see the cells, but adding the red really lets m
e see how the fluid is moving in the pan. Try using different soaps and shampoos to see which
ones work best for you. - All these demonstrations
have had me circulating through my notes to
make sure we've included all of these cool facts and experiments. Convection occurs in
fluids like air and water. I think these notes about staying cool will really come in handy
when the weather gets hot. I included an image
from Rylee's experiment because it allows us to
see how convection currents could imp
act weather and
create wind and storms. There is so much more to learn
when it comes to convection and we've only just
scratched at the surface. Speaking of surfaces, you should
consider researching magma and how it flows under
the earth's surface. I think you might be surprised by the convection currents
flowing deep underground. - Convection, such a
busy day learning today, and so much fun. We got ourselves moving and
literally, convection moves me. But here's the thing. I put all my notes int
o a science notebook and why did I do that? So I can hop back in there anytime and take a peek at what I learned today. Convection cells, convection carousels, convection to heat up water
to make my delicious tea. That's right, we had so much fun. I want you to keep learning. I want you to keep having fun. I want you to keep exploring and I want you to always remember that science is wherever you are. Take care everybody, bye. Here we go. Ready? Any time you have a
difference in temperature, boo
m, boom, boom, like we
did with that water tank. Water tank, that is super cool. This, I don't even know what
it's called, like carousel? What's it called?
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