Hello and welcome to No Effort November, a series of videos for the month of November in which it is becoming increasingly obvious the title is a misnomer. Todayās video is about lava lamps! Yes, those things that hang out in the set
unceremoniously. Just doinā their globular thing. Speaking of misnomers, unless the lamp has
broken the lava is inside the glass so shouldnāt they be magma lamps? These are important questions. Lava lamps have been a personal object of
fascination for many years. They are objectively pointless objects, producing little to no usable light, and take literal hours to become operational, especially for larger ones, but once theyāre going theyāre downright transfixing and hypnotic. And the way they work is stupidly simple but
at the same time - surprisingly complicated. And thatās what weāre gonna be talking
about today. First, the anatomy of a lava lamp. Ya got the base. Ya got the globe. And ya got a little hat to hide the fact that
the globe is really just an oddly-shaped bottle, complete with bottle cap. Inside the base is an incandescent light bulb,
often some kind of appliance bulb, and then when you put the globe on the base you end up with
what amounts to a weird bottle on top of a light bulb. And that light bulb has to be incandescent
because these things work thanks to the heat they generate, so itās a good thing they
use appliance bulbs since theyāre unlikely to be phased out. Canāt exactly put an LED bulb in an oven,
can you? But as is the case for many things in life,
itās whatās inside that counts. Clearly there are two substances inside this bottle: a clear one, and a not-clear one. Clearly they donāt want to mix, and itās
also clear that the not-clear one is some sort of wax, clearly. When the lamp is cold, it forms a big āol
clump at the bottom and some gentle inverting and shaking reveals that, clearly, this is a solid. That much is clear. Indeed, anyone whoās ever owned a lava lamp
and watched it warm up knows just how clear it is that weāre dealing with a wax. Except of course those who are both too impatient
and too careless to read the labels plastered on the things that say to be patient and then
leave product reviews claiming it doesnāt work - those people are lots of fun. Anyway, a fun, frequent phenomenon found in
flava flamps when they warm up is the Spiky Tower of Wax. Youāll often find that the clump of wax
at the bottom sort of pushes itself upward as the wax nearest to the bulb melts and expands, and once enough has melted it pokes a hole in the top of the dome, and then splooshes outward and upward where it resolidifies once in contact with the still-cold
mysterious clear liquid. Then itāll look like that for another half-hour
at least, so be patient, Greg. You donāt always get the Spiky Tower of
Wax, sometimes you just get the Bloaty Glob of Indigestion, or the Fantastic Flippy Flip. No matter how the wax behaves in the beginning,
it takes until the entire globe has warmed to the point that all the wax has melted (and can stay melted), and then you get variously colored jigglies. What a callback! Now hereās where our friend physics makes
for some magnificent magma magic. The wax, much like most substances out there,
expands when it melts. Water does the opposite because itās cheeky,
but anyway once the wax melts its density is almost exactly that of the mysterious clear liquid. That means itās not exactly gonna float,
nor is it gonna sink. Itāll just be suspended somewhat. But luckily for us, its density - and thus
its buoyancy in the mysterious clear liquid - varies a tiny bit with its temperature. And also luckily for us, because the heat
source is at the very bottom, we get a temperature gradient across the globeās length with
the hottest parts being at the bottom, and the coolest parts being at the top (farthest from the lamp). So, we end up with this cyclic behavior where
the wax starts at the bottom, gets heated by the lamp, becomes ever-so-slightly buoyant in the mysterious clear liquid thanks to thermal expansion, and then it floats to the top. Once there, it cools a bit since itās far
from the light bulb, which causes it to contract ever-so-slightly, and thus it is no longer buoyant but in fact sinkyant, and then it sinks back to the bottom. And this repeats over and over and over and
over and over and over and over and over and over and ov If youāve watched a lava lamp for any period
of time youāll know that these globs of wax donāt really want to combine with one another. Collisions are frequent but more often than
not result in a bounce and not a smoosh. But there needs to be something to force them
back together otherwise at some point youāll just end up with a bunch of teeny tiny beads floating
around as they continue to break apart. So, at the bottom of the globe is a coil of
wire which serves to break the surface tension of these globs and force them into one big
glob again. Thus the lamp can operate continuously. This also keeps the wax in contact with the
hottest part of the glass at the bottom, making it heat faster and keeping things moving. Now, you might be wondering what this heretofore
mysterious clear liquid is. Or for that matter, the wax. Ordinary candles are made of our āol friend
paraffin wax, which melts at fairly low temperatures and so seems like would be a good candidate. But paraffin wax is much less dense than water
and would never sink in it, so if it is paraffin wax, the mysterious clear liquid would have
to be something else. Now there are clear liquids out there in which
paraffin would sink, but many of them are flammable and thus pose a problem. A large quantity of, for example, acetone
in a glass bottle above a light bulb would probably not get UL approval. Plus, many of these potentially OK liquids
would mix with the paraffin and we canāt have that. We need it to be separate like oil and water. So, as it turns out, that mysterious clear
liquid is in fact water. Which now makes the wax a mysterious translucent
substance. For what wax behaves like paraffin but also
sinks in water? The answer is: paraffin. OK, so now comes the part of this video where
I make my very own lava lamp fluids for my very own lava lamp. I've done this once before, and here is
the beautiful result. Yes, the base isā¦ a bucket and the globe isā¦ a wine bottle but this is actually functioning like a real lava lamp. You can look online for home-made lava lamp
recipes but most of them are, well, terrible. I mean, sure, theyāre kid-friendly and most
are designed for fun little science projects but vegetable oil in water isnāt at all
like the real thing. Eventually I found a recipe that is probably
exactly whatās in commercial lava lamps. Or at least, what once was - this recipe uses nothing but what can be found in a craft store and a Walmart, but one of the ingredients isnāt available for sale in all fifty states any longer.... Yeah. And Iāll explain that recipe shortly but
first we need to swap out this cheap IKEA table that I care for at least a little bit with a folding table that I care for almost not-at-all. āCause you know, messy. Did that cut work? I hope so. Doesnāt matter because this part didnāt really go
as planned exactly. I am one for three here, and Iām fairly
confident Iāve figured out why. But first, for those of you looking at this lamp
with its clear liquid and yellow wax and wondering where one can find such an uncommon color
combination, well you canāt! Thatās because this lampās goop has been
replaced with my very own, and as you can see itās working quite well. There are some things Iād like to improve
about it but let me now explain how this was done. The wax is in fact ordinary paraffin wax. Iāve used raw paraffin from a craft store rather than just melted some white unscented candles down, which Iāve done because a previous lava lamp attempt with simple candles clouded the water. However, Iāve discovered that perhaps the
wax wasnāt the issue there - more on that later. The water is ordinary distilled water (tap water would probably be fine, too, for what itās worth), and a dash of dish soap, and kosher salt. Letās start with coloring the wax. What has proven to be the most difficult to recreate aspect of commercial lava lamps is the color. Paraffin, when it melts, is transparent but
that would be kinda hard to see in a lava lamp. It might look cool if dyed with candle-making
dye, but Iām looking to recreate the translucent look of a real lamp. I found with this one successful wine bottle
lamp that adding a bit of raw titanium dioxide powder seemed to work a treat to make it cloudy,
but I added a bit too much and the consistency is kindaā¦ not great. This time I tried simple oil paints. I really just want the pigments inside of
the paint, but the linseed oil base should hopefully dissolve into the paraffin well-enough. I experimented with blue, yellow, and brown (of course) and was quite happy with the result. In the end it still wasnāt quite perfect, after some time the paint does settle out towards the bottom of the wax, but with enough movement it gets mixed up at least a bit. Iād like to get my hands on some raw pigments
like the titanium dioxide powder in here, and I may give powder paint a shot in the future. So long as it can dissolve into or be suspended
in the wax and not leech into the water, itāll work. Well mostly, weāll get to that. But anyway... So now that I had a reasonable method of coloring
the wax, itās time to discuss how you get the wax to sink. This part is where I think some mishaps occurred
this time. We need to increase the density of the paraffin
so that when itās melted, it has a specific gravity of about 1 - that of water. So we need some sort of oil-soluble chemical
that is very dense. And it turns out that a somewhat commonly-available
automotive chemical fits the bill. What is it? ā« dramatic sting ā« Ah, so hereās where I get a little disclaimery. This chemical is, to put it mildly, questionable. Itās probably not particularly dangerous
to be around, after all automotive technicians have for decades sprayed this stuff haphazardly
all over brake parts and whatnot, but it is recognized to be a probable carcinogen with
prolonged exposure, and there are also a lot of other anecdotal health effects associated with this chemicalās use, so ya knowā¦ I wouldnāt consider this entirely harmless. Plus, I am not going to be using it for its
intended purpose whatsoever so, with that in mind; This video is intended for entertainment purposes only and does not endorse the use of this or any other chemical product in a manner inconsistent with its labeling. Do not try this at home. And, aside from potential health and safety
risks, this chemical also has certain environmental risks, too! Again, this isnāt great stuff. What is it? Why, itās tetrachloroethylene. Fun fact, this was widely used in dry cleaning,
and I believe is still pretty common in the industry today! Dry cleaning doesnāt mean things donāt
get wet, it just means they donāt get wet with water. In the dry cleaning industry this is often
called perc, short for perchloroethylene. And the reason why itās environmentally
problematic is the precise reason it is useful in lava lamps - itās very dense. The specific gravity of this chemical (Iām not gonna keep saying tetrachloroethylene, OK?) is 1.62, meaning that that is 1.62 times
denser than water. Great for my needs, but a problem for soil
and groundwater contamination because this stuff just sinks. And stinks, for that matter. This is probably the reason itās been outlawed
in some states. Newer formulations are various concoctions
of other fun things. Now, to be clear, this environmental hazard
is generally only problematic for big industrial spills. This stuff evaporates quite quickly, which is why
in some states anyway weāre still selling it in spray cans like this, but Iām just giving you yet another reason to consider this something that ought not to be played with. But it is exactly the sort of chemical we
need to make paraffin denser. So hereās what I did. First, I consumed the contents of and then
cleaned out a couple of wine bottles to hopefully make into fashionable bucket lamps. Now, I found that the punt of the bottle - thatās
the protrusion upward into the body by the glass - should be minimal to nonexistent for best results, and we need to add some sort of coil to help the wax reform at and stick to the bottom, just like in a commercial lamp. It doesnāt seem like it needs to be rust-proof
as once itās covered in wax it will pretty much always be covered in wax, so I used a couple of random springs. I learned from this previous wine bottle lamp
that you want the coil to be a bit smaller than the diameter of the bottle, as otherwise the wax can form a giant ball that never touches it given enough time. After I was satisfied with the coil, I added
distilled water to the bottle and placed it on the base. I wanted it to be close to operating temp
for when I added the wax. As it was heating, I prepared the color of
wax that I wanted in a glass jar using a double-boiler. After emptying the contents of a can of brakleen
into a mason jar outside, I then added it to the wax - something like one third the
volume of the wax seemed to work OK, but I was totally guessing everything here. Once it was mixed, and assuming the water
in the bottle was hot, I dumped it into the bottle. Here the wax didnāt sink so there wasnāt
enough brakleen in it. I experimented with using syringes to inject
the brakleen into the wax, and this worked sort of OK but was quite slow and ended up
in the thing I was hoping to avoid: little balls of way too dense wax rapidly sinking
to the bottom. In the end I used a larger syringe without
a needle to simply shoot into the top of the bottle. Once the bulk of the wax had sunk, it was
on to the finessing. If the wax is too dense, this isnāt a problem
- we can easily make the water denser by adding salt to it, and in this case itās best to
use kosher salt which wonāt cloud the water. I found that it was best to make a very saline
solution and use a syringe to add it to the water. Then I simply added the brine to the bottle
until the wax started to float. Some fine-tuning was of course necessary,
and luckily if you add too much brine well all you need to do is remove some of the liquid
and replace it with plain water. This process is a bit finicky though, as you
canāt start with a full bottle unless you want to deal with overflowing, and I still
had to remove some liquid anyway which means youāre screwing with the ratio of
salt to water once you add either brine or plain water... so... But in the end it wasnāt much of a hassle
and I found the process worked a treat. The idea of making the brine solution really
made this a fairly straightforward affair, but hereās where I ran into problems. The water was starting to cloud and I couldnāt
figure out why. It didnāt seem like it was the paint - the
earlier test didnāt have any issue with clouding. And simply adding the salt alone shouldnāt
have clouded the water. Whatās more, the wax seemed to be separating
somehow, as if there were impurities in it. I didnāt know what to make of this behavior
until I happened to notice that the can of brakleen I had used for this wasnāt purely
tetrachloroethylene. It also contained petroleum distillate and
trichloroethylene. Now, Iāve had these cans for ages - I bought
them something like a decade ago when I first tried this - and I never noticed that this
one was different. I suspect that the other components were reacting
to the paraffin wax which caused both the clouding of the water and weird impurities. And perhaps this was the culprit of my earlier
failed wine-bottle lamp with cheap candle wax - perhaps the wax was never the issue. Regardless, Iām considering the blue and
brown bottles to be lost causes. It seemed as though the wax impurities could
be removed with some finagling - a sort of crust was appearing on the surface of the molten
wax and it could be removed with a pokey thing - but a couple of attempts at this were fruitless for the
brown bottle. However, the yellow actual lava lamp, despite
initially having the same clouding and impurity issues was spared somehow. After removing the crusty wax, it came back
together with little clouding. I simply repeated that again, removing whatever tainted wax I could, and changed the water, and now it's remained almost perfectly clear. So thatās neat. The yellow lava lamp went a little differently,
of course. It started life as a brand-new pink wax with
purple liquid lamp, a color combo Iāve never really cared for despite being on sale forever, and after being warmed up just one time I unceremoniously opened the bottle cap and poured its contents out. A quick sniff test revealed that, for sure,
commercial lava lamps are no longer using tetrachloroethylene in their wax. It smells almost like plasticky flour, or something like
play-dough, nothing like the sweet chemical smell of this stuff. Iām very curious about what this wax is, and
itās undoubtedly safer than this concoction Iām cooking up. I cleaned its coil simply by running some
boiling water over it, and washed out the bottle as best as I could. From there the process was the same, but this
time I added too much brakleen and the wax immediately sank. I actually would prefer this to needing to
add it to floating wax, but you do need to be careful because if you go overboard on
the brakleen no amount of salt will get the wax to float. Luckily, though, not much was needed to get
the lava flowing. The last thing needed to make a decent lava
lamp is a couple of drops of dish soap. This helps keep the wax from getting stuck
to the glass, but more importantly it makes the lamp more visually appealing. Without it, the surface tension of the water
tends to keep the wax as just a couple of big blobs. The soap reduces that surface tension and
so you get a more active lamp. In hindsight, it seems best to add the soap
to the water before you even add the wax, however I began to suspect the soap may have
been causing the clouding problems. It sorta was, but only because of the wax
impurities caused by the non-pure brakleen. It seems like the soap was helping to get
them out of the wax, which is I guess a good thing, but led to clouding. Now, this recipe is far from perfect. For one, it requires and absolutely perfectly sealed bottle. You can still smell the brakleen when itās
added to the wax which means itās slowly seeping out of it and evaporating. With the wax underwater this doesnāt matter
- itās not water soluble so it probably just stays in the wax, but even if it leached
out into the water it would immediately sink to the bottom where wax would recombine with
it again. However, if left open to air, enough of it
will leave the wax over time to screw up the density. Ask me how I know. Also, well, the oil paint seemed promising
but in the end... wasnāt great. It seems like the linseed oil base isnāt
actually dissolving into the paraffin. It looked like it was, and perhaps itās
the bad brakleen thatās messing this up, but over time the paint is sinking in the wax
and not remaining suspended. Making things worse, the coil in this commercial
lamp seems to be acting something like a strainer, so over time the wax becomes clearer and clearer. I can get the paint to recombine by sort of
twisting the globe while itās warm and the wax is settled at the bottom, but this is
annoying and also - the paint just isnāt combining well anymore and itās all flecky
and gross. I may try oil paints once more with the correct
brakleen, but Iām willing to accept that it just doesnāt work. Now, the most remarkable thing about this process
is how finely balanced it is. The difference between no movement and good
movement was about 10cc of my brine solution, which itself had perhaps a gram of salt in
it, if that. The overall change in specific gravity on the bottle was
miniscule, but thatās just the world of lava lamps. They are finely tunedā¦ bottles. Speaking of, some tips and tricks! Some lava lamps misbehave. This one here just loves to get bubbles in
its wax. One thing you can try to help mitigate this
is to lower the wattage of the bulb - Tech Tangents had success with this for a pesky
lamp. He also noted that airflow around the lamp
can affect its performance, which actually makes perfect sense given how fragile this buoyancy balance is. Tiny changes in temperature can make the wax
sink or rise, and speeding up the rate at which energy leaves the bottle will greatly affect its behavior. If you want even finer control, you can put
your lava lamp on an inline dimmer switch. Iāve personally only found these necessary
for the giant Lava Grande lamps - and eventually they added dimmers to the lamp bases themselves. I'm not even sure if they still sell those, though They really need something like 85 watts of
output, which isnāt exactly a normal bulb size. But, easy enough to make happen with a dimmer! And before I go, Iād like to talk about
how Iām going to deal with this environmentally problematic goop Iāve created. Itās probably not the best idea to just send
this to landfill, so Iāll be keeping it. Iām gonna melt all this failed wax down
into a clump and keep it open in the garage because I suspect if exposed to air, eventually all
of the brakleen will evaporate out of the wax. The old mason jars I was using way back when
for this no longer have any odor to them, and the remaining wax has become harder with time (the wax and brakleen combo is quite soft as a solid - and whatās left now feels like ordinary paraffin). So it seems like eventually it just evaporates,
despite being dissolved in solid wax. Iāll be curious to see how long it takes
for the wax to off-gas, if it does. But if that fails, thereās also option B. The boiling point of tetrachloroethylene is 250 degrees fahrenheit, or 121 celsius. Thatās much lower than the flash point of
paraffin, so I could also just put this in a toaster oven set to 300 degrees andā¦ wait a while. Probably best to put the toaster oven outside
if Iām gonna do that. But this should cause it to vaporize and enter
the atmosphere where it will decay into less harmful stuff. Its lifetime in the atmosphere is estimated
to only be 2 to 5 months, so Iām not terribly worried about the impact of this, though I
do want to be careful. Anyway, thanks for watching. I hope you enjoyed this video about lava lamps
and one way they were made. I actually have no idea if this recipe was
ever used in commercial production, and thereās no way Iām gonna remember where I came across
it exactly, but if memory serves it did seem like it was, āahemā borrowed from someone back in the day. If there are any chemistry-inclined folks
out there who know of a more inert way to do this, or perhaps might have a guess at
whatās in lamps today, please do leave a comment. Iād also love suggestions on how better
to color the wax. What Iām leaning more towards is actual
candle-making dye for color, and just a bit of the titanium dioxide powder that's in here to achieve translucency. Though, as I said, I want to try powder paint
and track down some raw pigments, too. I think the biggest issue with the oil paint
is that the linseed oil isnāt actually dissolving into the paraffin, and it appears much denser than the wax. Since the titanium dioxide power seemed to
do so well for this one, I imagine any fine powder that can remain suspended in the wax will work. Iāll report back if there are any significant
findings. Toodles! ā« volcanically smooth jazz ā« Literal hours to become operational especially
for lawl -- [and then weird mouth sounds] ...appliance bulb, and then when you put theā¦ I did that too soon! [sound of hair drier] This is so exciting! OK, so now comesā¦ eh no I need to.. Cuz its gobedy go do do I know what Iām doing! I know what Iām doing. I should probably mention that there is an
alternate method to this that I want to try, thatās one of the reasons why Iām doing
three total lamps, or I hope to anyway. [spatters as water boils over onto the hot
plate] Ooh! Turn that down a bit... This recipe uses nothing but what eh biteh be Thatās because this lampās goop has been replaced with my very own, and as you can
see itās wor - god thatās hot. [laughing] Donāt touch the bottom, you fool! Man this video was weird. And the hair! Eugh, why! It looked way better in the experiment shots. Gotta try and replicate that next time.
Talk to NileRed on youtube about the chemistry
I found a couple patents related to lava lamps that could be interesting:
This is the original lava lamp patent from 1965. Interestingly, it uses paraffin and carbon tetrachloride, not tetrachloroethylene as he uses in the video.
This patent from 1981 details many other chemical combinations for multi-component lamps where there are several different "lavas". Some combinations may be safer or easier to acquire than carbon tetrachloride.
I really appreciate the comments on handling the environmental concerns. Nice work
Watching this with my lava lamp!
http://imgur.com/a/rY23Ydv
From the recent Twitter posts, I thought it was gonna be candles. This is very much a welcome surprise.
Try glycerin instead of dish soap.
Hello, I am retro272.
I posted my original formula about two decades ago on Oozinggoo.com. I am so delighted to see that it has been useful, and so many have had success with it. Thank you so much for bringing my formula to YouTube.
My advice for coloring the lava is to use candle dyes that you can buy in any craft store.
To make the lava opaque, use stearin, also available in any craft store that sells candle making supplies.
Glycerin can be used in place of salt to increase the specific gravity of the lamp water. Also, glycerin has the added benefit of lowering the freezing point of the lamp water, which will help prevent the lamp from freezing and breaking. (Salt also lowers the freezing point, I don't know which one lowers it the most.)
Any sufactant can be used in place of the dishsoap to reduce the surface tension of the lava. (Any sufactant will work as long as it won't cloud the water.)
Also, I cannot recommend using a dimmer enough. A dimmer allows you to finely adjust your lamp for optimum performance. Even a commercial lamp's performance can benefit from using a dimmer. Buy one, it's worth it!
It's been a long time since I tinkered with making motion lamps, and I am so glad to see I'm not the only one interested in making lava lamps.
Peace,
John Kurz (retro272)
Did you know that Mathmos used to make "smart" lava lamps that used color LEDs to provide the light and a heating plate to control the temperature? I don't think they make that model anymore, but the idea was really intriguing to me, because they could make a lamp with white wax and then change the color of the wax with rgb leds. In addition to being able to change the colors, a heating plate can control the temperature much more precisely with a temperature sensor in the base and a microcontroller. This could probably help when the lamp is in a room with more airflow and warmer or cooler temperatures.
I really wished I had bought one when I had the chance, but I remembered that it was expensive and it had to be shipped from the UK which made it even more expensive.
Also, it looks like the grande lamps are still available for purchase. I'm not sure if they have the dimmer though. I may buy one soon and find out.
Update: my grande lamp had arrived and I can confirm that it does not include a dimmer. It is a 100w bulb with a standard switch.
Well, I know itās two immiscible liquids.
Watching now.
Edit: guess I wonāt be trying to make my own, unless OP finds a safer, more satisfactory recipe.