Tornado in a Box

1: Cut a hole in a box
2: Put your.....no

1: Make a large, square(ish), cardboard tube. Mine is about a meter high and maybe .25 m x .25 m at the base. This is actually two boxes taped together. They aren't even the same size--I just blocked the holes with cardboard and duct tape.

2: On each side, make a slit near the right edge. Or the left edge. But the same for all 4 sides. It doesn't matter which you pick, since you can reverse it by flipping the tube end for end.

The exact width and distance from the edge don't matter too much and you can see I wandered all over the place. Hey, cutting cardboard is kind of hard!

3: Boil some water inside. I went to WalMart for a hotplate but the cheapest one was $20. I tried it on the stove, but that's dangerous and it was hard to see. Then I thought of the bottom of the rice steamer.

Position the tornado box under a light to maximize the reflection from the droplets.

We found that when the steamer was going full....steam, there was too much steam in there swirling around (steam steam steam). So if you turn it on and off every few minutes it might work better. Also, we tried using a steam humidifier but we got nothing at all. I think the steam jet might be coming out too fast and hot. (An ultrasonic humidifier probably has better visibility, but since it isn't hot you'd be missing another vital ingredient.)

The payoff at the end: I asked the Numbers, now that they'd seen a tornado being made, when and where would hurricanes be most likely? In the winter at the North Pole or in the summer at the equator. Ooooooooh, I get it! they said.