WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en 00:00:00.120 --> 00:00:03.003 Hello and welcome to No Effort November, 00:00:03.003 --> 00:00:07.579 a series of videos for the month of November in which it is becoming increasingly obvious 00:00:07.579 --> 00:00:09.139 the title is a misnomer. 00:00:09.139 --> 00:00:11.771 Today’s video is about lava lamps! 00:00:11.771 --> 00:00:15.424 Yes, those things that hang out in the set unceremoniously. 00:00:15.424 --> 00:00:17.851 Just doin’ their globular thing. 00:00:17.851 --> 00:00:22.835 Speaking of misnomers, unless the lamp has broken the lava is inside the glass 00:00:22.835 --> 00:00:25.110 so shouldn’t they be magma lamps? 00:00:25.110 --> 00:00:26.738 These are important questions. 00:00:27.243 --> 00:00:31.016 Lava lamps have been a personal object of fascination for many years. 00:00:31.016 --> 00:00:34.239 They are objectively pointless objects, 00:00:34.239 --> 00:00:38.823 producing little to no usable light, and take literal hours to become operational, 00:00:38.823 --> 00:00:40.314 especially for larger ones, 00:00:40.314 --> 00:00:44.188 but once they’re going they’re downright transfixing and hypnotic. 00:00:44.188 --> 00:00:49.531 And the way they work is stupidly simple but at the same time - surprisingly complicated. 00:00:49.531 --> 00:00:51.942 And that’s what we’re gonna be talking about today. 00:00:51.942 --> 00:00:54.261 First, the anatomy of a lava lamp. 00:00:54.261 --> 00:00:55.375 Ya got the base. 00:00:55.375 --> 00:00:56.733 Ya got the globe. 00:00:56.733 --> 00:01:01.324 And ya got a little hat to hide the fact that the globe is really just an oddly-shaped bottle, 00:01:01.324 --> 00:01:03.117 complete with bottle cap. 00:01:03.117 --> 00:01:08.041 Inside the base is an incandescent light bulb, often some kind of appliance bulb, 00:01:08.041 --> 00:01:14.720 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. 00:01:14.720 --> 00:01:19.680 And that light bulb has to be incandescent because these things work thanks to the heat they generate, 00:01:19.680 --> 00:01:23.920 so it’s a good thing they use appliance bulbs since they’re unlikely to be phased out. 00:01:23.920 --> 00:01:27.138 Can’t exactly put an LED bulb in an oven, can you? 00:01:27.138 --> 00:01:31.798 But as is the case for many things in life, it’s what’s inside that counts. 00:01:31.798 --> 00:01:35.147 Clearly there are two substances inside this bottle: 00:01:35.147 --> 00:01:37.478 a clear one, and a not-clear one. 00:01:37.478 --> 00:01:42.391 Clearly they don’t want to mix, and it’s also clear that the not-clear one is some sort of wax, 00:01:42.391 --> 00:01:43.261 clearly. 00:01:43.261 --> 00:01:48.770 When the lamp is cold, it forms a big ‘ol clump at the bottom and some gentle inverting and shaking reveals that, 00:01:48.770 --> 00:01:49.410 clearly, 00:01:49.410 --> 00:01:50.387 this is a solid. 00:01:50.387 --> 00:01:51.549 That much is clear. 00:01:51.549 --> 00:01:57.780 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. 00:01:57.780 --> 00:02:02.478 Except of course those who are both too impatient and too careless to read the labels plastered on the things 00:02:02.478 --> 00:02:06.004 that say to be patient and then leave product reviews claiming it doesn’t work - 00:02:06.004 --> 00:02:07.278 those people are lots of fun. 00:02:07.278 --> 00:02:13.099 Anyway, a fun, frequent phenomenon found in flava flamps when they warm up is the Spiky Tower of Wax. 00:02:13.099 --> 00:02:17.269 You’ll often find that the clump of wax at the bottom sort of pushes itself upward 00:02:17.269 --> 00:02:20.041 as the wax nearest to the bulb melts and expands, 00:02:20.041 --> 00:02:26.359 and once enough has melted it pokes a hole in the top of the dome, and then splooshes outward and upward where it resolidifies 00:02:26.359 --> 00:02:30.217 once in contact with the still-cold mysterious clear liquid. 00:02:30.217 --> 00:02:32.635 Then it’ll look like that for another half-hour at least, 00:02:32.635 --> 00:02:34.920 so be patient, Greg. 00:02:34.920 --> 00:02:37.184 You don’t always get the Spiky Tower of Wax, 00:02:37.184 --> 00:02:42.064 sometimes you just get the Bloaty Glob of Indigestion, or the Fantastic Flippy Flip. 00:02:42.064 --> 00:02:48.880 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 00:02:48.880 --> 00:02:53.554 (and can stay melted), and then you get variously colored jigglies. 00:02:53.554 --> 00:02:54.916 What a callback! 00:02:54.916 --> 00:02:59.249 Now here’s where our friend physics makes for some magnificent magma magic. 00:02:59.249 --> 00:03:03.368 The wax, much like most substances out there, expands when it melts. 00:03:03.368 --> 00:03:09.931 Water does the opposite because it’s cheeky, but anyway once the wax melts its density is almost exactly that 00:03:09.931 --> 00:03:12.147 of the mysterious clear liquid. 00:03:12.147 --> 00:03:16.283 That means it’s not exactly gonna float, nor is it gonna sink. 00:03:16.283 --> 00:03:18.514 It’ll just be suspended somewhat. 00:03:18.514 --> 00:03:23.777 But luckily for us, its density - and thus its buoyancy in the mysterious clear liquid - 00:03:23.777 --> 00:03:26.333 varies a tiny bit with its temperature. 00:03:26.333 --> 00:03:30.471 And also luckily for us, because the heat source is at the very bottom, 00:03:30.471 --> 00:03:35.594 we get a temperature gradient across the globe’s length with the hottest parts being at the bottom, 00:03:35.594 --> 00:03:38.906 and the coolest parts being at the top (farthest from the lamp). 00:03:38.906 --> 00:03:44.833 So, we end up with this cyclic behavior where the wax starts at the bottom, gets heated by the lamp, 00:03:44.833 --> 00:03:51.617 becomes ever-so-slightly buoyant in the mysterious clear liquid thanks to thermal expansion, and then it floats to the top. 00:03:51.617 --> 00:03:57.363 Once there, it cools a bit since it’s far from the light bulb, which causes it to contract ever-so-slightly, 00:03:57.363 --> 00:04:02.629 and thus it is no longer buoyant but in fact sinkyant, and then it sinks back to the bottom. 00:04:02.629 --> 00:04:05.756 And this repeats over and over and over and over and over and over and 00:04:05.756 --> 00:04:07.521 over and over and over and ov 00:04:07.521 --> 00:04:10.129 If you’ve watched a lava lamp for any period of time 00:04:10.129 --> 00:04:14.579 you’ll know that these globs of wax don’t really want to combine with one another. 00:04:14.579 --> 00:04:19.639 Collisions are frequent but more often than not result in a bounce and not a smoosh. 00:04:19.639 --> 00:04:23.910 But there needs to be something to force them back together otherwise at some point you’ll 00:04:23.910 --> 00:04:28.810 just end up with a bunch of teeny tiny beads floating around as they continue to break apart. 00:04:28.810 --> 00:04:34.230 So, at the bottom of the globe is a coil of wire which serves to break the surface tension 00:04:34.230 --> 00:04:37.870 of these globs and force them into one big glob again. 00:04:37.870 --> 00:04:40.680 Thus the lamp can operate continuously. 00:04:40.680 --> 00:04:44.584 This also keeps the wax in contact with the hottest part of the glass at the bottom, 00:04:44.584 --> 00:04:47.879 making it heat faster and keeping things moving. 00:04:47.879 --> 00:04:52.293 Now, you might be wondering what this heretofore mysterious clear liquid is. 00:04:52.293 --> 00:04:54.452 Or for that matter, the wax. 00:04:54.452 --> 00:04:57.143 Ordinary candles are made of our ‘ol friend paraffin wax, 00:04:57.143 --> 00:05:01.650 which melts at fairly low temperatures and so seems like would be a good candidate. 00:05:01.650 --> 00:05:05.581 But paraffin wax is much less dense than water and would never sink in it, 00:05:05.581 --> 00:05:10.534 so if it is paraffin wax, the mysterious clear liquid would have to be something else. 00:05:10.534 --> 00:05:13.488 Now there are clear liquids out there in which paraffin would sink, 00:05:13.488 --> 00:05:16.670 but many of them are flammable and thus pose a problem. 00:05:16.670 --> 00:05:21.486 A large quantity of, for example, acetone in a glass bottle above a light bulb 00:05:21.486 --> 00:05:23.723 would probably not get UL approval. 00:05:23.723 --> 00:05:27.694 Plus, many of these potentially OK liquids would mix with the paraffin 00:05:27.694 --> 00:05:29.419 and we can’t have that. 00:05:29.419 --> 00:05:31.560 We need it to be separate like oil and water. 00:05:31.560 --> 00:05:36.300 So, as it turns out, that mysterious clear liquid is in fact water. 00:05:36.300 --> 00:05:39.509 Which now makes the wax a mysterious translucent substance. 00:05:39.509 --> 00:05:43.639 For what wax behaves like paraffin but also sinks in water? 00:05:43.639 --> 00:05:44.759 The answer is: 00:05:44.759 --> 00:05:45.835 paraffin. 00:05:45.835 --> 00:05:52.289 OK, so now comes the part of this video where I make my very own lava lamp fluids for my very own lava lamp. 00:05:52.289 --> 00:05:58.402 I've done this once before, and here is the beautiful result. 00:05:58.402 --> 00:06:00.530 Yes, the base is… 00:06:00.530 --> 00:06:01.350 a bucket 00:06:01.350 --> 00:06:03.174 and the globe is… 00:06:03.174 --> 00:06:07.583 a wine bottle but this is actually functioning like a real lava lamp. 00:06:07.583 --> 00:06:13.586 You can look online for home-made lava lamp recipes but most of them are, well, terrible. 00:06:13.586 --> 00:06:18.009 I mean, sure, they’re kid-friendly and most are designed for fun little science projects but 00:06:18.009 --> 00:06:21.862 vegetable oil in water isn’t at all like the real thing. 00:06:21.862 --> 00:06:27.177 Eventually I found a recipe that is probably exactly what’s in commercial lava lamps. 00:06:27.177 --> 00:06:30.092 Or at least, what once was - 00:06:30.092 --> 00:06:34.358 this recipe uses nothing but what can be found in a craft store and a Walmart, 00:06:34.358 --> 00:06:39.627 but one of the ingredients isn’t available for sale in all fifty states any longer.... 00:06:40.739 --> 00:06:41.629 Yeah. 00:06:41.629 --> 00:06:47.801 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 00:06:47.801 --> 00:06:50.818 with a folding table that I care for almost not-at-all. 00:06:50.818 --> 00:06:53.525 ‘Cause you know, messy. 00:06:53.525 --> 00:06:55.727 Did that cut work? I hope so. 00:06:55.727 --> 00:06:59.623 Doesn’t matter because this part didn’t really go as planned exactly. 00:06:59.623 --> 00:07:03.651 I am one for three here, and I’m fairly confident I’ve figured out why. 00:07:03.651 --> 00:07:08.016 But first, for those of you looking at this lamp with its clear liquid and yellow wax 00:07:08.016 --> 00:07:12.260 and wondering where one can find such an uncommon color combination, 00:07:12.260 --> 00:07:13.642 well you can’t! 00:07:13.642 --> 00:07:17.189 That’s because this lamp’s goop has been replaced with my very own, 00:07:17.189 --> 00:07:19.591 and as you can see it’s working quite well. 00:07:19.591 --> 00:07:25.015 There are some things I’d like to improve about it but let me now explain how this was done. 00:07:25.015 --> 00:07:33.200 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, 00:07:33.200 --> 00:07:38.280 which I’ve done because a previous lava lamp attempt with simple candles clouded the water. 00:07:38.280 --> 00:07:44.060 However, I’ve discovered that perhaps the wax wasn’t the issue there - more on that later. 00:07:44.060 --> 00:07:46.516 The water is ordinary distilled water 00:07:46.516 --> 00:07:50.026 (tap water would probably be fine, too, for what it’s worth), 00:07:50.026 --> 00:07:53.626 and a dash of dish soap, and kosher salt. 00:07:53.626 --> 00:07:55.772 Let’s start with coloring the wax. 00:07:55.772 --> 00:08:01.886 What has proven to be the most difficult to recreate aspect of commercial lava lamps is the color. 00:08:01.886 --> 00:08:07.800 Paraffin, when it melts, is transparent but that would be kinda hard to see in a lava lamp. 00:08:07.800 --> 00:08:10.410 It might look cool if dyed with candle-making dye, 00:08:10.410 --> 00:08:14.650 but I’m looking to recreate the translucent look of a real lamp. 00:08:14.650 --> 00:08:21.340 I found with this one successful wine bottle lamp that adding a bit of raw titanium dioxide powder 00:08:21.340 --> 00:08:29.628 seemed to work a treat to make it cloudy, but I added a bit too much and the consistency is kinda… not great. 00:08:29.628 --> 00:08:32.039 This time I tried simple oil paints. 00:08:32.039 --> 00:08:36.339 I really just want the pigments inside of the paint, but the linseed oil base should 00:08:36.339 --> 00:08:39.440 hopefully dissolve into the paraffin well-enough. 00:08:39.440 --> 00:08:42.195 I experimented with blue, yellow, and brown 00:08:42.195 --> 00:08:43.053 (of course) 00:08:43.053 --> 00:08:45.423 and was quite happy with the result. 00:08:45.423 --> 00:08:48.138 In the end it still wasn’t quite perfect, 00:08:48.138 --> 00:08:51.618 after some time the paint does settle out towards the bottom of the wax, 00:08:51.618 --> 00:08:55.522 but with enough movement it gets mixed up at least a bit. 00:08:55.522 --> 00:09:00.283 I’d like to get my hands on some raw pigments like the titanium dioxide powder in here, 00:09:00.283 --> 00:09:03.291 and I may give powder paint a shot in the future. 00:09:03.291 --> 00:09:09.519 So long as it can dissolve into or be suspended in the wax and not leech into the water, it’ll work. 00:09:10.681 --> 00:09:12.362 Well mostly, we’ll get to that. 00:09:12.362 --> 00:09:13.579 But anyway... 00:09:13.579 --> 00:09:19.674 So now that I had a reasonable method of coloring the wax, it’s time to discuss how you get the wax to sink. 00:09:19.674 --> 00:09:22.941 This part is where I think some mishaps occurred this time. 00:09:22.941 --> 00:09:30.540 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. 00:09:30.540 --> 00:09:35.149 So we need some sort of oil-soluble chemical that is very dense. 00:09:35.149 --> 00:09:40.389 And it turns out that a somewhat commonly-available automotive chemical fits the bill. 00:09:40.389 --> 00:09:41.544 What is it? 00:09:42.352 --> 00:09:44.337 ♫ dramatic sting ♫ 00:09:44.337 --> 00:09:48.041 Ah, so here’s where I get a little disclaimery. 00:09:48.041 --> 00:09:52.240 This chemical is, to put it mildly, questionable. 00:09:52.240 --> 00:09:58.146 It’s probably not particularly dangerous to be around, after all automotive technicians have for decades 00:09:58.146 --> 00:10:01.461 sprayed this stuff haphazardly all over brake parts and whatnot, 00:10:01.461 --> 00:10:05.381 but it is recognized to be a probable carcinogen with prolonged exposure, 00:10:05.381 --> 00:10:11.300 and there are also a lot of other anecdotal health effects associated with this chemical’s use, so ya know… 00:10:11.300 --> 00:10:14.198 I wouldn’t consider this entirely harmless. 00:10:14.198 --> 00:10:21.001 Plus, I am not going to be using it for its intended purpose whatsoever so, with that in mind; 00:10:21.001 --> 00:10:30.142 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. 00:10:30.142 --> 00:10:32.725 Do not try this at home. 00:10:32.725 --> 00:10:39.142 And, aside from potential health and safety risks, this chemical also has certain environmental risks, too! 00:10:39.142 --> 00:10:41.703 Again, this isn’t great stuff. 00:10:41.703 --> 00:10:42.726 What is it? 00:10:42.726 --> 00:10:45.088 Why, it’s tetrachloroethylene. 00:10:45.088 --> 00:10:51.360 Fun fact, this was widely used in dry cleaning, and I believe is still pretty common in the industry today! 00:10:51.360 --> 00:10:55.190 Dry cleaning doesn’t mean things don’t get wet, it just means they don’t get wet 00:10:55.190 --> 00:10:56.470 with water. 00:10:56.470 --> 00:11:00.970 In the dry cleaning industry this is often called perc, short for perchloroethylene. 00:11:00.970 --> 00:11:04.940 And the reason why it’s environmentally problematic is the precise reason it is useful 00:11:04.940 --> 00:11:08.300 in lava lamps - it’s very dense. 00:11:08.300 --> 00:11:10.132 The specific gravity of this chemical 00:11:10.132 --> 00:11:12.524 (I’m not gonna keep saying tetrachloroethylene, OK?) 00:11:12.524 --> 00:11:17.501 is 1.62, meaning that that is 1.62 times denser than water. 00:11:17.501 --> 00:11:24.138 Great for my needs, but a problem for soil and groundwater contamination because this stuff just sinks. 00:11:24.138 --> 00:11:25.893 And stinks, for that matter. 00:11:25.893 --> 00:11:29.153 This is probably the reason it’s been outlawed in some states. 00:11:29.153 --> 00:11:33.183 Newer formulations are various concoctions of other fun things. 00:11:33.183 --> 00:11:39.006 Now, to be clear, this environmental hazard is generally only problematic for big industrial spills. 00:11:39.006 --> 00:11:45.457 This stuff evaporates quite quickly, which is why in some states anyway we’re still selling it in spray cans like this, but 00:11:45.457 --> 00:11:50.918 I’m just giving you yet another reason to consider this something that ought not to be played with. 00:11:50.918 --> 00:11:55.779 But it is exactly the sort of chemical we need to make paraffin denser. 00:11:55.779 --> 00:11:57.160 So here’s what I did. 00:11:57.160 --> 00:12:00.897 First, I consumed the contents of and then cleaned out a couple of wine bottles 00:12:00.897 --> 00:12:03.829 to hopefully make into fashionable bucket lamps. 00:12:03.829 --> 00:12:09.433 Now, I found that the punt of the bottle - that’s the protrusion upward into the body by the glass - 00:12:09.433 --> 00:12:12.721 should be minimal to nonexistent for best results, 00:12:12.721 --> 00:12:19.890 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. 00:12:19.890 --> 00:12:23.494 It doesn’t seem like it needs to be rust-proof as once it’s covered in wax 00:12:23.494 --> 00:12:26.062 it will pretty much always be covered in wax, so 00:12:26.062 --> 00:12:28.490 I used a couple of random springs. 00:12:28.490 --> 00:12:34.285 I learned from this previous wine bottle lamp that you want the coil to be a bit smaller than the diameter of the bottle, 00:12:34.285 --> 00:12:39.778 as otherwise the wax can form a giant ball that never touches it given enough time. 00:12:39.778 --> 00:12:44.990 After I was satisfied with the coil, I added distilled water to the bottle and placed it on the base. 00:12:44.990 --> 00:12:48.618 I wanted it to be close to operating temp for when I added the wax. 00:12:48.618 --> 00:12:53.851 As it was heating, I prepared the color of wax that I wanted in a glass jar using a double-boiler. 00:12:53.851 --> 00:12:58.192 After emptying the contents of a can of brakleen into a mason jar outside, 00:12:58.192 --> 00:13:03.566 I then added it to the wax - something like one third the volume of the wax seemed to work OK, 00:13:03.566 --> 00:13:06.576 but I was totally guessing everything here. 00:13:06.576 --> 00:13:09.965 Once it was mixed, and assuming the water in the bottle was hot, 00:13:09.965 --> 00:13:11.877 I dumped it into the bottle. 00:13:11.877 --> 00:13:15.459 Here the wax didn’t sink so there wasn’t enough brakleen in it. 00:13:15.459 --> 00:13:19.329 I experimented with using syringes to inject the brakleen into the wax, 00:13:19.329 --> 00:13:25.543 and this worked sort of OK but was quite slow and ended up in the thing I was hoping to avoid: 00:13:25.543 --> 00:13:29.620 little balls of way too dense wax rapidly sinking to the bottom. 00:13:29.620 --> 00:13:34.320 In the end I used a larger syringe without a needle to simply shoot into the top of the bottle. 00:13:34.320 --> 00:13:38.374 Once the bulk of the wax had sunk, it was on to the finessing. 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 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. 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. 00:13:54.490 --> 00:13:58.763 Then I simply added the brine to the bottle until the wax started to float. 00:13:58.763 --> 00:14:03.292 Some fine-tuning was of course necessary, and luckily if you add too much brine 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. 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 00:14:11.610 --> 00:14:15.291 want to deal with overflowing, and I still had to remove some liquid anyway which 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... 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. 00:14:25.220 --> 00:14:30.177 The idea of making the brine solution really made this a fairly straightforward affair, 00:14:30.177 --> 00:14:32.759 but here’s where I ran into problems. 00:14:32.759 --> 00:14:36.190 The water was starting to cloud and I couldn’t figure out why. 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. 00:14:41.646 --> 00:14:45.100 And simply adding the salt alone shouldn’t have clouded the water. 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. 00:14:50.949 --> 00:14:54.995 I didn’t know what to make of this behavior until I happened to notice 00:14:54.995 --> 00:15:00.240 that the can of brakleen I had used for this wasn’t purely tetrachloroethylene. 00:15:00.240 --> 00:15:04.143 It also contained petroleum distillate and trichloroethylene. 00:15:04.143 --> 00:15:08.681 Now, I’ve had these cans for ages - I bought them something like a decade ago 00:15:08.681 --> 00:15:12.589 when I first tried this - and I never noticed that this one was different. 00:15:12.589 --> 00:15:17.100 I suspect that the other components were reacting to the paraffin wax which caused both the 00:15:17.100 --> 00:15:19.910 clouding of the water and weird impurities. 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 00:15:24.901 --> 00:15:27.070 - perhaps the wax was never the issue. 00:15:27.070 --> 00:15:32.330 Regardless, I’m considering the blue and brown bottles to be lost causes. 00:15:32.330 --> 00:15:36.839 It seemed as though the wax impurities could be removed with some finagling - 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 - 00:15:42.894 --> 00:15:46.500 but a couple of attempts at this were fruitless for the brown bottle. 00:15:46.500 --> 00:15:52.697 However, the yellow actual lava lamp, despite initially having the same clouding and impurity issues 00:15:52.697 --> 00:15:54.943 was spared somehow. 00:15:54.943 --> 00:15:59.177 After removing the crusty wax, it came back together with little clouding. 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. 00:16:06.779 --> 00:16:08.402 So that’s neat. 00:16:08.402 --> 00:16:11.300 The yellow lava lamp went a little differently, of course. 00:16:11.300 --> 00:16:15.104 It started life as a brand-new pink wax with purple liquid lamp, 00:16:15.104 --> 00:16:18.722 a color combo I’ve never really cared for despite being on sale forever, 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. 00:16:25.040 --> 00:16:28.876 A quick sniff test revealed that, for sure, commercial lava lamps 00:16:28.876 --> 00:16:32.750 are no longer using tetrachloroethylene in their wax. 00:16:32.750 --> 00:16:37.091 It smells almost like plasticky flour, or something like play-dough, 00:16:37.091 --> 00:16:40.638 nothing like the sweet chemical smell of this stuff. 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. 00:16:48.480 --> 00:16:51.505 I cleaned its coil simply by running some boiling water over it, and 00:16:51.505 --> 00:16:53.899 washed out the bottle as best as I could. 00:16:53.899 --> 00:16:57.729 From there the process was the same, but this time I added too much brakleen 00:16:57.729 --> 00:16:59.899 and the wax immediately sank. 00:16:59.899 --> 00:17:03.158 I actually would prefer this to needing to add it to floating wax, 00:17:03.158 --> 00:17:07.204 but you do need to be careful because if you go overboard on the brakleen 00:17:07.204 --> 00:17:10.049 no amount of salt will get the wax to float. 00:17:10.049 --> 00:17:13.709 Luckily, though, not much was needed to get the lava flowing. 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. 00:17:18.490 --> 00:17:21.921 This helps keep the wax from getting stuck to the glass, but more importantly 00:17:21.921 --> 00:17:24.867 it makes the lamp more visually appealing. 00:17:24.867 --> 00:17:27.792 Without it, the surface tension of the water tends to keep the wax 00:17:27.792 --> 00:17:30.420 as just a couple of big blobs. 00:17:30.420 --> 00:17:34.590 The soap reduces that surface tension and so you get a more active lamp. 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, 00:17:40.070 --> 00:17:45.789 however I began to suspect the soap may have been causing the clouding problems. 00:17:45.789 --> 00:17:52.000 It sorta was, but only because of the wax impurities caused by the non-pure brakleen. 00:17:52.000 --> 00:17:55.304 It seems like the soap was helping to get them out of the wax, 00:17:55.304 --> 00:17:58.970 which is I guess a good thing, but led to clouding. 00:17:58.970 --> 00:18:01.840 Now, this recipe is far from perfect. 00:18:01.840 --> 00:18:05.793 For one, it requires and absolutely perfectly sealed bottle. 00:18:05.793 --> 00:18:08.836 You can still smell the brakleen when it’s added to the wax 00:18:08.836 --> 00:18:12.679 which means it’s slowly seeping out of it and evaporating. 00:18:12.679 --> 00:18:16.530 With the wax underwater this doesn’t matter - it’s not water soluble so it probably 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 00:18:20.690 --> 00:18:24.030 to the bottom where wax would recombine with it again. 00:18:24.030 --> 00:18:28.682 However, if left open to air, enough of it will leave the wax over time 00:18:28.682 --> 00:18:30.700 to screw up the density. 00:18:30.700 --> 00:18:32.090 Ask me how I know. 00:18:32.090 --> 00:18:36.690 Also, well, the oil paint seemed promising but in the end... 00:18:36.690 --> 00:18:37.890 wasn’t great. 00:18:37.890 --> 00:18:42.500 It seems like the linseed oil base isn’t actually dissolving into the paraffin. 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, 00:18:47.165 --> 00:18:52.403 but over time the paint is sinking in the wax and not remaining suspended. 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, 00:18:57.915 --> 00:19:01.549 so over time the wax becomes clearer and clearer. 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 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 00:19:10.303 --> 00:19:13.289 combining well anymore and it’s all flecky and gross. 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 00:19:18.799 --> 00:19:20.470 it just doesn’t work. 00:19:20.470 --> 00:19:25.000 Now, the most remarkable thing about this process is how finely balanced it is. 00:19:25.000 --> 00:19:30.040 The difference between no movement and good movement was about 10cc of my brine solution, 00:19:30.040 --> 00:19:33.440 which itself had perhaps a gram of salt in it, if that. 00:19:33.440 --> 00:19:36.954 The overall change in specific gravity on the bottle was miniscule, 00:19:36.954 --> 00:19:40.070 but that’s just the world of lava lamps. 00:19:40.070 --> 00:19:43.176 They are finely tuned… bottles. 00:19:43.353 --> 00:19:45.620 Speaking of, some tips and tricks! 00:19:45.620 --> 00:19:47.539 Some lava lamps misbehave. 00:19:47.539 --> 00:19:51.020 This one here just loves to get bubbles in its wax. 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 - 00:19:55.017 --> 00:19:57.910 Tech Tangents had success with this for a pesky lamp. 00:19:57.910 --> 00:20:01.378 He also noted that airflow around the lamp can affect its performance, 00:20:01.378 --> 00:20:05.854 which actually makes perfect sense given how fragile this buoyancy balance is. 00:20:05.854 --> 00:20:09.545 Tiny changes in temperature can make the wax sink or rise, 00:20:09.545 --> 00:20:14.770 and speeding up the rate at which energy leaves the bottle will greatly affect its behavior. 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. 00:20:19.409 --> 00:20:24.500 I’ve personally only found these necessary for the giant Lava Grande lamps - and eventually 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 00:20:29.593 --> 00:20:32.604 They really need something like 85 watts of output, 00:20:32.604 --> 00:20:34.889 which isn’t exactly a normal bulb size. 00:20:34.889 --> 00:20:37.673 But, easy enough to make happen with a dimmer! 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 00:20:41.267 --> 00:20:44.320 environmentally problematic goop I’ve created. 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. 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 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. 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, 00:21:05.079 --> 00:21:08.092 and the remaining wax has become harder with time 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). 00:21:14.490 --> 00:21:19.743 So it seems like eventually it just evaporates, despite being dissolved in solid wax. 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. 00:21:24.438 --> 00:21:27.427 But if that fails, there’s also option B. 00:21:27.427 --> 00:21:33.299 The boiling point of tetrachloroethylene is 250 degrees fahrenheit, or 121 celsius. 00:21:33.299 --> 00:21:36.341 That’s much lower than the flash point of paraffin, 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. 00:21:42.685 --> 00:21:45.820 Probably best to put the toaster oven outside if I’m gonna do that. 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. 00:21:51.036 --> 00:21:55.003 Its lifetime in the atmosphere is estimated to only be 2 to 5 months, so 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. 00:21:59.409 --> 00:22:01.020 Anyway, thanks for watching. 00:22:01.020 --> 00:22:05.529 I hope you enjoyed this video about lava lamps and one way they were made. 00:22:05.529 --> 00:22:09.720 I actually have no idea if this recipe was ever used in commercial production, 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, 00:22:16.950 --> 00:22:20.529 “ahem” borrowed from someone back in the day. 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 00:22:25.121 --> 00:22:28.676 do this, or perhaps might have a guess at what’s in lamps today, 00:22:28.676 --> 00:22:30.443 please do leave a comment. 00:22:30.443 --> 00:22:33.783 I’d also love suggestions on how better to color the wax. 00:22:33.783 --> 00:22:37.968 What I’m leaning more towards is actual candle-making dye for color, 00:22:37.968 --> 00:22:42.740 and just a bit of the titanium dioxide powder that's in here to achieve translucency. 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. 00:22:48.000 --> 00:22:51.214 I think the biggest issue with the oil paint is that the linseed oil 00:22:51.214 --> 00:22:56.260 isn’t actually dissolving into the paraffin, and it appears much denser than the wax. 00:22:56.260 --> 00:23:00.314 Since the titanium dioxide power seemed to do so well for this one, 00:23:00.314 --> 00:23:04.890 I imagine any fine powder that can remain suspended in the wax will work. 00:23:04.890 --> 00:23:08.011 I’ll report back if there are any significant findings. 00:23:08.011 --> 00:23:09.263 Toodles! 00:23:10.046 --> 00:23:12.195 ♫ volcanically smooth jazz ♫ 00:23:12.195 --> 00:23:16.753 Literal hours to become operational especially for lawl -- [and then weird mouth sounds] 00:23:16.930 --> 00:23:19.620 ...appliance bulb, and then when you put the… 00:23:19.620 --> 00:23:20.567 I did that too soon! 00:23:21.375 --> 00:23:22.767 [sound of hair drier] 00:23:23.601 --> 00:23:25.380 This is so exciting! 00:23:27.224 --> 00:23:29.490 OK, so now comes… eh no I need to.. 00:23:29.490 --> 00:23:31.140 Cuz its gobedy go do do I know what I’m doing! 00:23:31.140 --> 00:23:32.140 I know what I’m doing. 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, 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. 00:23:39.950 --> 00:23:41.018 [spatters as water boils over onto the hot plate] 00:23:41.018 --> 00:23:42.018 Ooh! 00:23:43.383 --> 00:23:44.788 Turn that down a bit... 00:23:44.788 --> 00:23:47.779 This recipe uses nothing but what eh biteh be 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 - 00:23:52.990 --> 00:23:54.008 god that’s hot. 00:23:54.008 --> 00:23:55.488 [laughing] 00:23:56.246 --> 00:23:58.564 Don’t touch the bottom, you fool! 00:24:00.989 --> 00:24:05.282 Man this video was weird. 00:24:05.282 --> 00:24:08.978 And the hair! Eugh, why! 00:24:08.978 --> 00:24:12.860 It looked way better in the experiment shots. 00:24:12.860 --> 00:24:16.268 Gotta try and replicate that next time.