Yesterday, we went over to Brooklyn-based artist Mark Esper’s workshop and checked out his homeade “Tornado”. Mark built the tornado for an upcoming show of his work in a NYC gallery this fall. The Tornado works by heating up water quickly (on a 2,000 WATT powered hot plate!) surrounded by curved walls that the resulting steam is created from. As the air is drawn into the area above the plate, it begins to swirl, thus causing the tornado to form. Pretty amazing! Unfortunately it was hard to get a nice pic of the Tornado itself, but here’s one of the mechanism.
They had one of these at a kids science park in Bristol UK called ‘@Bristol@’
My friend has a picture on flickr, I cant find mine.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/joewebber/8842168/in/set-219388/
ned kahn developed this exact piece many years ago while working at the exploratorium- a science museum in san francisco.
http://www.exploratorium.edu/turbulent/exhibit/mesocyclone.html
many exploratorium made reproductions have been made and now reside in other instituitions around the world.