Travis' 4th Grade Science Fair Project

 Travis decided that he wanted to do an individual science fair project this year.  4th graders normally do projects as a class but he wanted to do his own to study water tornados.  He's always been fascinated with the water tornado that forms as the bathtub drains and so he and Brian came up with an idea to study when a tornado forms.  First they found a toy bin to use to fill up with water and they drilled different sized holes and glued on different length pipes to see when the tornados formed.

 They found that the water had to be pretty still or a tornado would form more easily.  They came up with a system to reuse the water for each test and conducted many tests over several days of experiments.  They noted the height of the tornado when it would form.

Here's the results Travis got for 4 different pipe sizes and at several different pipe lengths.  The shorter the pipe the less likely the tornado would form and the smaller the pipe the less likely it would form.  So if you want a tornado, you need a large diameter pipe that is a long drain pipe.  However, to Travis' surprise the tornado drains the water slower, so the poster focused on ways to avoid tornado formation.

 

 Here's an overhead shot of a tornado.

And a nice skinny one they saw very early on.

Here he is with his poster.  He won a couple awards in the school district competition and earned $25 as a result!  He and his parents were quite proud of his effort!

Here's the video of him receiving his award.  You can get the idea that he was surprised.