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Hello and welcome to No Effort November,

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a series of videos for the month of November in which it is becoming increasingly obvious

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the title is a misnomer.

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Today’s video is about lava lamps!

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Yes, those things that hang out in the set
unceremoniously.

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Just doin’ their globular thing.

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Speaking of misnomers, unless the lamp has
broken the lava is inside the glass

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so shouldn’t they be magma lamps?

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These are important questions.

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Lava lamps have been a personal object of
fascination for many years.

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They are objectively pointless objects,

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producing little to no usable light, and take literal hours to become operational,

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especially for larger ones,

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but once they’re going they’re downright transfixing and hypnotic.

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And the way they work is stupidly simple but
at the same time - surprisingly complicated.

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And that’s what we’re gonna be talking
about today.

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First, the anatomy of a lava lamp.

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Ya got the base.

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Ya got the globe.

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And ya got a little hat to hide the fact that
the globe is really just an oddly-shaped bottle,

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complete with bottle cap.

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Inside the base is an incandescent light bulb,
often some kind of appliance bulb,

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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.

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And that light bulb has to be incandescent
because these things work thanks to the heat they generate,

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so it’s a good thing they
use appliance bulbs since they’re unlikely to be phased out.

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Can’t exactly put an LED bulb in an oven,
can you?

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But as is the case for many things in life,
it’s what’s inside that counts.

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Clearly there are two substances inside this bottle:

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a clear one, and a not-clear one.

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Clearly they don’t want to mix, and it’s
also clear that the not-clear one is some sort of wax,

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clearly.

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When the lamp is cold, it forms a big ‘ol
clump at the bottom and some gentle inverting and shaking reveals that,

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clearly,

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this is a solid.

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That much is clear.

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Indeed, anyone who’s ever owned a lava lamp
and watched it warm up knows just how clear it is that we’re dealing with a wax.

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Except of course those who are both too impatient
and too careless to read the labels plastered on the things

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that say to be patient and then
leave product reviews claiming it doesn’t work -

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those people are lots of fun.

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Anyway, a fun, frequent phenomenon found in
flava flamps when they warm up is the Spiky Tower of Wax.

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You’ll often find that the clump of wax
at the bottom sort of pushes itself upward

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as the wax nearest to the bulb melts and expands,

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and once enough has melted it pokes a hole in the top of the dome, and then splooshes outward and upward where it resolidifies

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once in contact with the still-cold 
mysterious clear liquid.

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Then it’ll look like that for another half-hour
at least,

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so be patient, Greg.

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You don’t always get the Spiky Tower of
Wax,

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sometimes you just get the Bloaty Glob of Indigestion, or the Fantastic Flippy Flip.

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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

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(and can stay melted), and then you get variously colored jigglies.

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What a callback!

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Now here’s where our friend physics makes
for some magnificent magma magic.

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The wax, much like most substances out there,
expands when it melts.

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Water does the opposite because it’s cheeky,
but anyway once the wax melts its density is almost exactly that

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of the mysterious clear liquid.

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That means it’s not exactly gonna float,
nor is it gonna sink.

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It’ll just be suspended somewhat.

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But luckily for us, its density - and thus
its buoyancy in the mysterious clear liquid -

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varies a tiny bit with its temperature.

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And also luckily for us, because the heat
source is at the very bottom,

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we get a temperature gradient across the globe’s length with
the hottest parts being at the bottom,

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and the coolest parts being at the top (farthest from the lamp).

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So, we end up with this cyclic behavior where
the wax starts at the bottom, gets heated by the lamp,

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becomes ever-so-slightly buoyant in the mysterious clear liquid thanks to thermal expansion, and then it floats to the top.

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Once there, it cools a bit since it’s far
from the light bulb, which causes it to contract ever-so-slightly,

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and thus it is no longer buoyant but in fact sinkyant, and then it sinks back to the bottom.

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And this repeats over and over and over and
over and over and over and

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over and over and over and ov

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If you’ve watched a lava lamp for any period
of time

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you’ll know that these globs of wax don’t really want to combine with one another.

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Collisions are frequent but more often than
not result in a bounce and not a smoosh.

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But there needs to be something to force them
back together otherwise at some point you’ll

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just end up with a bunch of teeny tiny beads floating
around as they continue to break apart.

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So, at the bottom of the globe is a coil of
wire which serves to break the surface tension

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of these globs and force them into one big
glob again.

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Thus the lamp can operate continuously.

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This also keeps the wax in contact with the
hottest part of the glass at the bottom,

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making it heat faster and keeping things moving.

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Now, you might be wondering what this heretofore
mysterious clear liquid is.

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Or for that matter, the wax.

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Ordinary candles are made of our ‘ol friend
paraffin wax,

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which melts at fairly low temperatures and so seems like would be a good candidate.

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But paraffin wax is much less dense than water
and would never sink in it,

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so if it is paraffin wax, the mysterious clear liquid would have
to be something else.

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Now there are clear liquids out there in which
paraffin would sink,

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but many of them are flammable and thus pose a problem.

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A large quantity of, for example, acetone
in a glass bottle above a light bulb

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would probably not get UL approval.

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Plus, many of these potentially OK liquids
would mix with the paraffin

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and we can’t have that.

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We need it to be separate like oil and water.

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So, as it turns out, that mysterious clear
liquid is in fact water.

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Which now makes the wax a mysterious translucent
substance.

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For what wax behaves like paraffin but also
sinks in water?

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The answer is:

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paraffin.

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OK, so now comes the part of this video where
I make my very own lava lamp fluids for my very own lava lamp.

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I've done this once before, and here is
the beautiful result.

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Yes, the base is…

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a bucket

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and the globe is…

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a wine bottle but this is actually functioning like a real lava lamp.

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You can look online for home-made lava lamp
recipes but most of them are, well, terrible.

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I mean, sure, they’re kid-friendly and most
are designed for fun little science projects but

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vegetable oil in water isn’t at all
like the real thing.

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Eventually I found a recipe that is probably
exactly what’s in commercial lava lamps.

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Or at least, what once was -

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this recipe uses nothing but what can be found in a craft store and a Walmart,

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but one of the ingredients isn’t available for sale in all fifty states any longer....

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Yeah.

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And I’ll explain that recipe shortly but
first we need to swap out this cheap IKEA table that I care for at least a little bit

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with a folding table that I care for almost not-at-all.

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‘Cause you know, messy.

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Did that cut work? I hope so.

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Doesn’t matter because this part didn’t really go
as planned exactly.

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I am one for three here, and I’m fairly
confident I’ve figured out why.

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But first, for those of you looking at this lamp
with its clear liquid and yellow wax

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and wondering where one can find such an uncommon color
combination,

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well you can’t!

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That’s because this lamp’s goop has been
replaced with my very own,

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and as you can see it’s working quite well.

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There are some things I’d like to improve
about it but let me now explain how this was done.

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The wax is in fact ordinary paraffin wax. I’ve used raw paraffin from a craft store rather than just melted some white unscented candles down,

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which I’ve done because a previous lava lamp attempt with simple candles clouded the water.

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However, I’ve discovered that perhaps the
wax wasn’t the issue there - more on that later.

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The water is ordinary distilled water

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(tap water would probably be fine, too, for what it’s worth),

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and a dash of dish soap, and kosher salt.

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Let’s start with coloring the wax.

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What has proven to be the most difficult to recreate aspect of commercial lava lamps is the color.

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Paraffin, when it melts, is transparent but
that would be kinda hard to see in a lava lamp.

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It might look cool if dyed with candle-making
dye,

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but I’m looking to recreate the translucent look of a real lamp.

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I found with this one successful wine bottle
lamp that adding a bit of raw titanium dioxide powder

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seemed to work a treat to make it cloudy,
but I added a bit too much and the consistency is kinda… not great.

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This time I tried simple oil paints.

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I really just want the pigments inside of
the paint, but the linseed oil base should

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hopefully dissolve into the paraffin well-enough.

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I experimented with blue, yellow, and brown

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(of course)

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and was quite happy with the result.

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In the end it still wasn’t quite perfect,

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after some time the paint does settle out towards the bottom of the wax,

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but with enough movement it gets mixed up at least a bit.

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I’d like to get my hands on some raw pigments
like the titanium dioxide powder in here,

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and I may give powder paint a shot in the future.

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So long as it can dissolve into or be suspended
in the wax and not leech into the water, it’ll work.

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Well mostly, we’ll get to that.

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But anyway...

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So now that I had a reasonable method of coloring
the wax, it’s time to discuss how you get the wax to sink.

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This part is where I think some mishaps occurred
this time.

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We need to increase the density of the paraffin
so that when it’s melted, it has a specific gravity of about 1 - that of water.

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So we need some sort of oil-soluble chemical
that is very dense.

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And it turns out that a somewhat commonly-available
automotive chemical fits the bill.

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What is it?

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♫ dramatic sting ♫

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Ah, so here’s where I get a little disclaimery.

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This chemical is, to put it mildly, questionable.

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It’s probably not particularly dangerous
to be around, after all automotive technicians have for decades

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sprayed this stuff haphazardly
all over brake parts and whatnot,

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but it is recognized to be a probable carcinogen with
prolonged exposure,

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and there are also a lot of other anecdotal health effects associated with this chemical’s use, so ya know…

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I wouldn’t consider this entirely harmless.

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Plus, I am not going to be using it for its
intended purpose whatsoever so, with that in mind;

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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.

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Do not try this at home.

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And, aside from potential health and safety
risks, this chemical also has certain environmental risks, too!

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Again, this isn’t great stuff.

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What is it?

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Why, it’s tetrachloroethylene.

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Fun fact, this was widely used in dry cleaning,
and I believe is still pretty common in the industry today!

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Dry cleaning doesn’t mean things don’t
get wet, it just means they don’t get wet

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with water.

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In the dry cleaning industry this is often
called perc, short for perchloroethylene.

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And the reason why it’s environmentally
problematic is the precise reason it is useful

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in lava lamps - it’s very dense.

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The specific gravity of this chemical

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(I’m not gonna keep saying tetrachloroethylene, OK?)

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is 1.62, meaning that that is 1.62 times
denser than water.

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Great for my needs, but a problem for soil
and groundwater contamination because this stuff just sinks.

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And stinks, for that matter.

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This is probably the reason it’s been outlawed
in some states.

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Newer formulations are various concoctions
of other fun things.

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Now, to be clear, this environmental hazard
is generally only problematic for big industrial spills.

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This stuff evaporates quite quickly, which is why
in some states anyway we’re still selling it in spray cans like this, but

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I’m just giving you yet another reason to consider this something that ought not to be played with.

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But it is exactly the sort of chemical we
need to make paraffin denser.

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So here’s what I did.

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First, I consumed the contents of and then
cleaned out a couple of wine bottles

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to hopefully make into fashionable bucket lamps.

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Now, I found that the punt of the bottle - that’s
the protrusion upward into the body by the glass -

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should be minimal to nonexistent for best results,

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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.

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It doesn’t seem like it needs to be rust-proof
as once it’s covered in wax

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it will pretty much always be covered in wax, so

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I used a couple of random springs.

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I learned from this previous wine bottle lamp
that you want the coil to be a bit smaller than the diameter of the bottle,

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as otherwise the wax can form a giant ball that never touches it given enough time.

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After I was satisfied with the coil, I added
distilled water to the bottle and placed it on the base.

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I wanted it to be close to operating temp
for when I added the wax.

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As it was heating, I prepared the color of
wax that I wanted in a glass jar using a double-boiler.

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After emptying the contents of a can of brakleen
into a mason jar outside,

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I then added it to the wax - something like one third the
volume of the wax seemed to work OK,

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but I was totally guessing everything here.

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Once it was mixed, and assuming the water
in the bottle was hot,

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I dumped it into the bottle.

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Here the wax didn’t sink so there wasn’t
enough brakleen in it.

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I experimented with using syringes to inject
the brakleen into the wax,

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and this worked sort of OK but was quite slow and ended up
in the thing I was hoping to avoid:

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little balls of way too dense wax rapidly sinking
to the bottom.

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In the end I used a larger syringe without
a needle to simply shoot into the top of the bottle.

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Once the bulk of the wax had sunk, it was
on to the finessing.

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00:13:38,374 --> 00:13:43,079
If the wax is too dense, this isn’t a problem
- we can easily make the water denser

214
00:13:43,079 --> 00:13:48,600
by adding salt to it, and in this case it’s best to
use kosher salt which won’t cloud the water.

215
00:13:48,600 --> 00:13:54,490
I found that it was best to make a very saline
solution and use a syringe to add it to the water.

216
00:13:54,490 --> 00:13:58,763
Then I simply added the brine to the bottle
until the wax started to float.

217
00:13:58,763 --> 00:14:03,292
Some fine-tuning was of course necessary,
and luckily if you add too much brine

218
00:14:03,292 --> 00:14:07,589
well all you need to do is remove some of the liquid
and replace it with plain water.

219
00:14:07,589 --> 00:14:11,610
This process is a bit finicky though, as you
can’t start with a full bottle unless you

220
00:14:11,610 --> 00:14:15,291
want to deal with overflowing, and I still
had to remove some liquid anyway which

221
00:14:15,291 --> 00:14:20,838
means you’re screwing with the ratio of
salt to water once you add either brine or plain water... so...

222
00:14:20,838 --> 00:14:25,220
But in the end it wasn’t much of a hassle
and I found the process worked a treat.

223
00:14:25,220 --> 00:14:30,177
The idea of making the brine solution really
made this a fairly straightforward affair,

224
00:14:30,177 --> 00:14:32,759
but here’s where I ran into problems.

225
00:14:32,759 --> 00:14:36,190
The water was starting to cloud and I couldn’t
figure out why.

226
00:14:36,190 --> 00:14:41,646
It didn’t seem like it was the paint - the
earlier test didn’t have any issue with clouding.

227
00:14:41,646 --> 00:14:45,100
And simply adding the salt alone shouldn’t
have clouded the water.

228
00:14:45,100 --> 00:14:50,949
What’s more, the wax seemed to be separating
somehow, as if there were impurities in it.

229
00:14:50,949 --> 00:14:54,995
I didn’t know what to make of this behavior
until I happened to notice

230
00:14:54,995 --> 00:15:00,240
that the can of brakleen I had used for this wasn’t purely
tetrachloroethylene.

231
00:15:00,240 --> 00:15:04,143
It also contained petroleum distillate and
trichloroethylene.

232
00:15:04,143 --> 00:15:08,681
Now, I’ve had these cans for ages - I bought
them something like a decade ago

233
00:15:08,681 --> 00:15:12,589
when I first tried this - and I never noticed that this
one was different.

234
00:15:12,589 --> 00:15:17,100
I suspect that the other components were reacting
to the paraffin wax which caused both the

235
00:15:17,100 --> 00:15:19,910
clouding of the water and weird impurities.

236
00:15:19,910 --> 00:15:24,901
And perhaps this was the culprit of my earlier
failed wine-bottle lamp with cheap candle wax

237
00:15:24,901 --> 00:15:27,070
- perhaps the wax was never the issue.

238
00:15:27,070 --> 00:15:32,330
Regardless, I’m considering the blue and
brown bottles to be lost causes.

239
00:15:32,330 --> 00:15:36,839
It seemed as though the wax impurities could
be removed with some finagling -

240
00:15:36,839 --> 00:15:42,894
a sort of crust was appearing on the surface of the molten
wax and it could be removed with a pokey thing -

241
00:15:42,894 --> 00:15:46,500
but a couple of attempts at this were fruitless for the
brown bottle.

242
00:15:46,500 --> 00:15:52,697
However, the yellow actual lava lamp, despite
initially having the same clouding and impurity issues

243
00:15:52,697 --> 00:15:54,943
was spared somehow.

244
00:15:54,943 --> 00:15:59,177
After removing the crusty wax, it came back
together with little clouding.

245
00:15:59,177 --> 00:16:06,779
I simply repeated that again, removing whatever tainted wax I could, and changed the water, and now it's remained almost perfectly clear.

246
00:16:06,779 --> 00:16:08,402
So that’s neat.

247
00:16:08,402 --> 00:16:11,300
The yellow lava lamp went a little differently,
of course.

248
00:16:11,300 --> 00:16:15,104
It started life as a brand-new pink wax with
purple liquid lamp,

249
00:16:15,104 --> 00:16:18,722
a color combo I’ve never really cared for despite being on sale forever,

250
00:16:18,722 --> 00:16:25,040
and after being warmed up just one time I unceremoniously opened the bottle cap and poured its contents out.

251
00:16:25,040 --> 00:16:28,876
A quick sniff test revealed that, for sure,
commercial lava lamps

252
00:16:28,876 --> 00:16:32,750
are no longer using tetrachloroethylene in their wax.

253
00:16:32,750 --> 00:16:37,091
It smells almost like plasticky flour, or something like
play-dough,

254
00:16:37,091 --> 00:16:40,638
nothing like the sweet chemical smell of this stuff.

255
00:16:40,638 --> 00:16:48,480
I’m very curious about what this wax is, and
it’s undoubtedly safer than this concoction I’m cooking up.

256
00:16:48,480 --> 00:16:51,505
I cleaned its coil simply by running some
boiling water over it, and

257
00:16:51,505 --> 00:16:53,899
washed out the bottle as best as I could.

258
00:16:53,899 --> 00:16:57,729
From there the process was the same, but this
time I added too much brakleen

259
00:16:57,729 --> 00:16:59,899
and the wax immediately sank.

260
00:16:59,899 --> 00:17:03,158
I actually would prefer this to needing to
add it to floating wax,

261
00:17:03,158 --> 00:17:07,204
but you do need to be careful because if you go overboard on
the brakleen

262
00:17:07,204 --> 00:17:10,049
no amount of salt will get the wax to float.

263
00:17:10,049 --> 00:17:13,709
Luckily, though, not much was needed to get
the lava flowing.

264
00:17:13,709 --> 00:17:18,490
The last thing needed to make a decent lava
lamp is a couple of drops of dish soap.

265
00:17:18,490 --> 00:17:21,921
This helps keep the wax from getting stuck
to the glass, but more importantly

266
00:17:21,921 --> 00:17:24,867
it makes the lamp more visually appealing.

267
00:17:24,867 --> 00:17:27,792
Without it, the surface tension of the water
tends to keep the wax

268
00:17:27,792 --> 00:17:30,420
as just a couple of big blobs.

269
00:17:30,420 --> 00:17:34,590
The soap reduces that surface tension and
so you get a more active lamp.

270
00:17:34,590 --> 00:17:40,070
In hindsight, it seems best to add the soap
to the water before you even add the wax,

271
00:17:40,070 --> 00:17:45,789
however I began to suspect the soap may have
been causing the clouding problems.

272
00:17:45,789 --> 00:17:52,000
It sorta was, but only because of the wax
impurities caused by the non-pure brakleen.

273
00:17:52,000 --> 00:17:55,304
It seems like the soap was helping to get
them out of the wax,

274
00:17:55,304 --> 00:17:58,970
which is I guess a good thing, but led to clouding.

275
00:17:58,970 --> 00:18:01,840
Now, this recipe is far from perfect.

276
00:18:01,840 --> 00:18:05,793
For one, it requires and absolutely perfectly sealed bottle.

277
00:18:05,793 --> 00:18:08,836
You can still smell the brakleen when it’s
added to the wax

278
00:18:08,836 --> 00:18:12,679
which means it’s slowly seeping out of it and evaporating.

279
00:18:12,679 --> 00:18:16,530
With the wax underwater this doesn’t matter
- it’s not water soluble so it probably

280
00:18:16,530 --> 00:18:20,690
just stays in the wax, but even if it leached
out into the water it would immediately sink

281
00:18:20,690 --> 00:18:24,030
to the bottom where wax would recombine with
it again.

282
00:18:24,030 --> 00:18:28,682
However, if left open to air, enough of it
will leave the wax over time

283
00:18:28,682 --> 00:18:30,700
to screw up the density.

284
00:18:30,700 --> 00:18:32,090
Ask me how I know.

285
00:18:32,090 --> 00:18:36,690
Also, well, the oil paint seemed promising
but in the end...

286
00:18:36,690 --> 00:18:37,890
wasn’t great.

287
00:18:37,890 --> 00:18:42,500
It seems like the linseed oil base isn’t
actually dissolving into the paraffin.

288
00:18:42,500 --> 00:18:47,165
It looked like it was, and perhaps it’s
the bad brakleen that’s messing this up,

289
00:18:47,165 --> 00:18:52,403
but over time the paint is sinking in the wax
and not remaining suspended.

290
00:18:52,403 --> 00:18:57,915
Making things worse, the coil in this commercial
lamp seems to be acting something like a strainer,

291
00:18:57,915 --> 00:19:01,549
so over time the wax becomes clearer and clearer.

292
00:19:01,549 --> 00:19:05,549
I can get the paint to recombine by sort of
twisting the globe while it’s warm and the

293
00:19:05,549 --> 00:19:10,303
wax is settled at the bottom, but this is
annoying and also - the paint just isn’t

294
00:19:10,303 --> 00:19:13,289
combining well anymore and it’s all flecky
and gross.

295
00:19:13,718 --> 00:19:18,799
I may try oil paints once more with the correct
brakleen, but I’m willing to accept that

296
00:19:18,799 --> 00:19:20,470
it just doesn’t work.

297
00:19:20,470 --> 00:19:25,000
Now, the most remarkable thing about this process
is how finely balanced it is.

298
00:19:25,000 --> 00:19:30,040
The difference between no movement and good
movement was about 10cc of my brine solution,

299
00:19:30,040 --> 00:19:33,440
which itself had perhaps a gram of salt in
it, if that.

300
00:19:33,440 --> 00:19:36,954
The overall change in specific gravity on the bottle was
miniscule,

301
00:19:36,954 --> 00:19:40,070
but that’s just the world of lava lamps.

302
00:19:40,070 --> 00:19:43,176
They are finely tuned… bottles.

303
00:19:43,353 --> 00:19:45,620
Speaking of, some tips and tricks!

304
00:19:45,620 --> 00:19:47,539
Some lava lamps misbehave.

305
00:19:47,539 --> 00:19:51,020
This one here just loves to get bubbles in
its wax.

306
00:19:51,020 --> 00:19:55,017
One thing you can try to help mitigate this
is to lower the wattage of the bulb -

307
00:19:55,017 --> 00:19:57,910
Tech Tangents had success with this for a pesky
lamp.

308
00:19:57,910 --> 00:20:01,378
He also noted that airflow around the lamp
can affect its performance,

309
00:20:01,378 --> 00:20:05,854
which actually makes perfect sense given how fragile this buoyancy balance is.

310
00:20:05,854 --> 00:20:09,545
Tiny changes in temperature can make the wax
sink or rise,

311
00:20:09,545 --> 00:20:14,770
and speeding up the rate at which energy leaves the bottle will greatly affect its behavior.

312
00:20:14,770 --> 00:20:19,409
If you want even finer control, you can put
your lava lamp on an inline dimmer switch.

313
00:20:19,409 --> 00:20:24,500
I’ve personally only found these necessary
for the giant Lava Grande lamps - and eventually

314
00:20:24,500 --> 00:20:29,593
they added dimmers to the lamp bases themselves. I'm not even sure if they still sell those, though

315
00:20:29,593 --> 00:20:32,604
They really need something like 85 watts of
output,

316
00:20:32,604 --> 00:20:34,889
which isn’t exactly a normal bulb size.

317
00:20:34,889 --> 00:20:37,673
But, easy enough to make happen with a dimmer!

318
00:20:37,673 --> 00:20:41,267
And before I go, I’d like to talk about
how I’m going to deal with this

319
00:20:41,267 --> 00:20:44,320
environmentally problematic goop I’ve created.

320
00:20:44,320 --> 00:20:49,625
It’s probably not the best idea to just send
this to landfill, so I’ll be keeping it.

321
00:20:49,625 --> 00:20:54,142
I’m gonna melt all this failed wax down
into a clump and keep it open in the garage

322
00:20:54,142 --> 00:21:00,090
because I suspect if exposed to air, eventually all
of the brakleen will evaporate out of the wax.

323
00:21:00,090 --> 00:21:05,079
The old mason jars I was using way back when
for this no longer have any odor to them,

324
00:21:05,079 --> 00:21:08,092
and the remaining wax has become harder with time

325
00:21:08,092 --> 00:21:14,490
(the wax and brakleen combo is quite soft as a solid - and what’s left now feels like ordinary paraffin).

326
00:21:14,490 --> 00:21:19,743
So it seems like eventually it just evaporates,
despite being dissolved in solid wax.

327
00:21:19,743 --> 00:21:24,438
I’ll be curious to see how long it takes
for the wax to off-gas, if it does.

328
00:21:24,438 --> 00:21:27,427
But if that fails, there’s also option B.

329
00:21:27,427 --> 00:21:33,299
The boiling point of tetrachloroethylene is 250 degrees fahrenheit, or 121 celsius.

330
00:21:33,299 --> 00:21:36,341
That’s much lower than the flash point of
paraffin,

331
00:21:36,341 --> 00:21:42,685
so I could also just put this in a toaster oven set to 300 degrees and… wait a while.

332
00:21:42,685 --> 00:21:45,820
Probably best to put the toaster oven outside
if I’m gonna do that.

333
00:21:45,820 --> 00:21:51,036
But this should cause it to vaporize and enter
the atmosphere where it will decay into less harmful stuff.

334
00:21:51,036 --> 00:21:55,003
Its lifetime in the atmosphere is estimated
to only be 2 to 5 months, so

335
00:21:55,003 --> 00:21:59,409
I’m not terribly worried about the impact of this, though I
do want to be careful.

336
00:21:59,409 --> 00:22:01,020
Anyway, thanks for watching.

337
00:22:01,020 --> 00:22:05,529
I hope you enjoyed this video about lava lamps
and one way they were made.

338
00:22:05,529 --> 00:22:09,720
I actually have no idea if this recipe was
ever used in commercial production,

339
00:22:09,720 --> 00:22:16,950
and there’s no way I’m gonna remember where I came across
it exactly, but if memory serves it did seem like it was,

340
00:22:16,950 --> 00:22:20,529
“ahem” borrowed from someone back in the day.

341
00:22:20,529 --> 00:22:25,121
If there are any chemistry-inclined folks
out there who know of a more inert way to

342
00:22:25,121 --> 00:22:28,676
do this, or perhaps might have a guess at
what’s in lamps today,

343
00:22:28,676 --> 00:22:30,443
please do leave a comment.

344
00:22:30,443 --> 00:22:33,783
I’d also love suggestions on how better
to color the wax.

345
00:22:33,783 --> 00:22:37,968
What I’m leaning more towards is actual
candle-making dye for color,

346
00:22:37,968 --> 00:22:42,740
and just a bit of the titanium dioxide powder that's in here to achieve translucency.

347
00:22:42,740 --> 00:22:48,000
Though, as I said, I want to try powder paint
and track down some raw pigments, too.

348
00:22:48,000 --> 00:22:51,214
I think the biggest issue with the oil paint
is that the linseed oil

349
00:22:51,214 --> 00:22:56,260
isn’t actually dissolving into the paraffin, and it appears much denser than the wax.

350
00:22:56,260 --> 00:23:00,314
Since the titanium dioxide power seemed to
do so well for this one,

351
00:23:00,314 --> 00:23:04,890
I imagine any fine powder that can remain suspended in the wax will work.

352
00:23:04,890 --> 00:23:08,011
I’ll report back if there are any significant
findings.

353
00:23:08,011 --> 00:23:09,263
Toodles!

354
00:23:10,046 --> 00:23:12,195
♫ volcanically smooth jazz ♫

355
00:23:12,195 --> 00:23:16,753
Literal hours to become operational especially
for lawl -- [and then weird mouth sounds]

356
00:23:16,930 --> 00:23:19,620
...appliance bulb, and then when you put the…

357
00:23:19,620 --> 00:23:20,567
I did that too soon!

358
00:23:21,375 --> 00:23:22,767
[sound of hair drier]

359
00:23:23,601 --> 00:23:25,380
This is so exciting!

360
00:23:27,224 --> 00:23:29,490
OK, so now comes… eh no I need to..

361
00:23:29,490 --> 00:23:31,140
Cuz its gobedy go do do I know what I’m doing!

362
00:23:31,140 --> 00:23:32,140
I know what I’m doing.

363
00:23:32,140 --> 00:23:36,175
I should probably mention that there is an
alternate method to this that I want to try,

364
00:23:36,175 --> 00:23:39,950
that’s one of the reasons why I’m doing
three total lamps, or I hope to anyway.

365
00:23:39,950 --> 00:23:41,018
[spatters as water boils over onto the hot
plate]

366
00:23:41,018 --> 00:23:42,018
Ooh!

367
00:23:43,383 --> 00:23:44,788
Turn that down a bit...

368
00:23:44,788 --> 00:23:47,779
This recipe uses nothing but what eh biteh be

369
00:23:47,779 --> 00:23:52,990
That’s because this lamp’s goop has been replaced with my very own, and as you can
see it’s wor -

370
00:23:52,990 --> 00:23:54,008
god that’s hot.

371
00:23:54,008 --> 00:23:55,488
[laughing]

372
00:23:56,246 --> 00:23:58,564
Don’t touch the bottom, you fool!

373
00:24:00,989 --> 00:24:05,282
Man this video was weird.

374
00:24:05,282 --> 00:24:08,978
And the hair! Eugh, why!

375
00:24:08,978 --> 00:24:12,860
It looked way better in the experiment shots.

376
00:24:12,860 --> 00:24:16,268
Gotta try and replicate that next time.