By James Bow

One thing that separates humans from the other animals is our ability to make connections between things.

There is a story that, at the 1904 World’s Fair, teenage ice cream vendor Arnold Fomachou was having trouble with customers walking off with the bowls he was selling his ice cream in.

Ernest Hamwi, who was selling thin, sugar-coated waffles, came to Arnold’s rescue, wrapping his wafer-thin waffle into a cone to hold the ice cream, and thus the ice cream cone was born.

Many of the world’s greatest inventions have come about that way.

The frankfurter and the roll came together as the hot dog. Mould and bread came together to form penicillin. Peanut butter and chocolate came together as peanut butter cups, and so on.

A few months ago, I bought my kids a tornado maker. We were in Toronto, visiting the Ontario Science Centre and no visit to the Science Centre is complete without a trip to the gift shop.

The tornado maker is a $20 blender that doesn’t actually blend anything, except water.

Instead of the usual metal rotating blades, a plastic paddle is found at the bottom. You fill the reservoir with water, screw on the top, and turn the thing on. The paddle spins, producing a vortex that pulls down from the surface, just like a tornado.

Also included was a button to unleash real tornado sounds, and a DVD containing an episode of Storm Chasers. The kids had a lot fun with it.

Soon after, my wife and eldest daughter went to Home Outfitters and bought a carbonator.

This far more useful device takes a canister of carbon dioxide and forces it through a small nozzle in a bottle of water that’s screwed into place. Compressed carbon dioxide is dissolved into the water (or any liquid, for that matter) producing a fizzy drink. Add syrup to the newly carbonated liquid, and you have instant soda.

It works very well, and once we cleaned up the sprays of carbonated water on the walls and kitchen counter that we received while we were learning how to use the machine, we were in business.

This carbonation device is marketed as a way to save on recycled bottles, but it’s also a good way to give your children the soda pop experience without actually giving them soda pop. Any liquid can be carbonated — orange juice, apple juice, even mint tea. We haven’t tried coffee yet, but give us time.

Anyway, getting up one morning and making breakfast after rushing to get my eldest daughter to school, I spied the tornado maker on the kitchen counter not too far from the carbonator. The kids’ grandma is here on a visit and the kids wanted to show her what the tornado maker can do. Seeing the two devices so close together put a thought into my head.

That thought went: I wonder what would happen if I put carbonated water in the tornado maker . . .

The world’s greatest inventions have been born by people making connections between things. So too have the world’s greatest messes.

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James Bow is a writer and a father of two in Kitchener.
You can read more about him online at bowjamesbow.ca or follow him on Twitter at @jamesbow.