Vegetable Oil Lava Lamp

A traditional ceramic dish oil lamp how the vegetable oil lamp works.

Vegetable oil lava lamp.

Vegetable oil water and an alka seltzer tablet. Your lava lamp is ready. I prefer to have atleast 3 4 of the container. To begin color about 1 2 cup of water with food coloring.

If you don t have all the ingredients on hand you can make a few substitutions. Lava lamp without alka seltzer. Vegetable oil or you could use mineral or baby oil instead fizzing tablets such as alka seltzer food coloring. Original alka seltzer tablets.

Because the original lava lamp produces heat and it is not safe to keep the. Even a small amount of oil can burn for a few hours. The original lava lamps are not safe to leave on all night. When using aspirin eno tablet.

Watch scientist joe as he makes the lava lamp experiment here. Fill the bottle up about 1 4th 1 quarter with water. Can you leave lava lamps on all night. Instead of vegetable oil you can use baby oil.

Next if you don t have alka seltzer you can make your own mix. The vegetable oil will be drawn up into the wick. We found it created a lot of bubbles and the clarity of the lava lamp was not as good but it does still work. How much vegetable oil do you put in a lava lamp.

To make a cool looking lava lamp you ll need a large flashlight like the one in the. Add 3 4 drops of the food colour to the water and oil solution and mix it well. You can choose the size of the container based on how much vegetable oil you have to spare. Even if you are using olive oil which is fairly expensive it still ends up being cheaper than most candles.

Fill up to of t the glass mason jar with vegetable oil fill the remaining of the glass mason jar with water leaving about an inch empty at the top. Vegetable oil on the other hand is a nonpolar molecule made of long chains of hydrocarbons strings of carbon atoms bonded to hydrogen atoms. Pour the vegetable oil in the bottle until is almost full. I like using these gel food colors for vibrant coloring.

Unlike the water molecule there is equal sharing of electrons between the carbon and hydrogen atoms. So for 1 portion of water i would add 3 portion of oil for a lava lamp. For this groovy experiment kids get to recreate their parents lava lamp while learning about liquid density. The flame ignites it causing the oil to vaporize.

Fill the container about 3 4 with vegetable oil. Then add some salt to the bottle or an effervescent tablet so the mixture starts fizzing.