Trying to crack the original formula- why was kerosene used?

In my quest to figure out exactly what the original formula is, one thing I haven't figured out is why they used Kerosene in the mixture. It seems like it was a very small part of the mixture, something like 7% by volume.

But what was the point? Did it act as a preservative, or enhance the flow, or help to bind everything together?

Speculations?

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Permalink Reply by John Maroney on February 2, 2023 at 3:35am

No your right, here's the report on the guy that ingested it:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8644972/

Ant Bee said:

Microcrystalline is a type of paraffin wax that has a denser structure. It has a higher melting point, which is what I THINK makes it do the spiking. I add a little bit to my normal paraffin/LP mixture to impart some of the characteristics of oldschool lava. However, if you make the mixture entirely of microcrystalline, it has a really hard time melting and just kinda sits there in a permanent "warmup" phase.

Kerosene is lighter than perc- it floats on water.

The original formula is not known, we just know a little bit because some dude ingested a lava lamp and the hospital requested the ingredients. Lava Lite obliged but only to a certain extent- hence why we know kerosene was involved. (I may be getting my facts a little wrong here)

One thing we do know is that Crayola used to provide their wax. However, crayons don't work well for this, because they have a hardening agent that really screws things up in a lot of ways. I'm still trying to figure out exactly how I could go about removing that agent, because melted crayola wax in a lamp looks JUST like vintage lava.