Submarine snorkel

Imagine you're swimming in a swimming pool, but you need to get a breath of air without coming all the way up to the surface. You might try to put your face in the water and breathe through a straw. That's kind of like what a submarine snorkel does!

A submarine is a big, metal boat that can go deep under the water. Sometimes when it's moving around, it needs to use its big engines, which need air to work. But if it comes all the way up to the surface, the submarine might be seen by other boats or airplanes or people who might want to hurt it. So a submarine snorkel lets air come in from the surface without the whole submarine coming up.

The snorkel is a tall tube that sticks up from the top of the submarine, like a tall straw. It has a big mouth that stays above the water, and a long neck that goes down into the submarine where the engines are. When the submarine wants to use the snorkel, it pops the mouth up above the water and starts sucking air through the neck.

The neck of the snorkel is made to keep the water out, even if there are big waves or the submarine moves around a lot. It has special flaps and sponges and little doors that can open and close, all to make sure the air going into the submarine is nice and clean and dry and doesn't have any water with it.

The snorkel isn't used all the time, just when the submarine needs to use its engines. The rest of the time it stays hidden on the submarine, so no one knows it's there. And that's how the submarine can breathe and stay hidden at the same time!