Help with making own Lava Lamp

[Sondra]

Hi all!
Let me start by saying any help or advice will be greatly appreciated and that I am a mother helping my 12 y/o with her Science project and we are taking all safety precautions.
Ok, we are doing the perc/wax/distilled/salt water lava lamp solution. We are at the point of - got the lava to float extremely slowly when hot, but is now at the top with a big hanging bulge but no intention of falling. Any ideas on how to get this stuff to move like an actual lava lamp? We did the salt water slowly being added until it started rising as being said on the previous boards. Now we are stuck. We are even using a Sobe bottle :D. Are we missing something?

Thanks in advance,
Sondra

[Brian]

did you use a small, and i mean small, drop of dish soap? that is used to keep the lava flowing from the top. If you did use it, then it might be that you used a tad too much salt. just by using a bit too much will cause the lava to stay at the top because it makes the liquid more dense than the lava when heated. I hope this answered some questions. Hope she gets an A on her science project. :)

[Sondra]

Thanks for your reply, Brian. Yes, I did add a drop of Ivory soap, mixed with the salt water solution first (so probably not a drop in the lava lamp). Could I have not added enough soap? Also, if I added too much salt, do I start over with the water solution or do I just add some more distilled water. One time I actually got the lava to fall (most of it did anyway)but it never moved back up and I didn't touch the water, was that because the water just heated up? I'm sorry if I am asking too many questions, there just isn't anywhere else to get this info and thank GOD we have you guys!! :D I thought we could just do the recipe and finesse it a bit and bam, but NO, LOL! We have been messing with it since New Years and we have until Feb. 23rd, but they want bits of info along the way, stupid teachers. If we can't get it to work, we will need to give up soon to work in a new direction, so we are trying really hard. I am trying my best by coming here to talk to you guys to get help. So, Brian :D any more input? LOL

[Brian]

too much soup will cause a lot of bubles in the lava, so I don't recommend using more than 2 small drops. I have been thinking, if it isn't the water it could be the solution inside the wax. Are you using straight wax or the mixture of brake cleaner with it? I haven't heard of straight wax working to well. If it is the liquid and used too much salt then yes you can poor some of it out or all of it out and dilute the water and then start putting a drop of the salt mixture in at a time, giving about 15 mins. or so to see if it starts breaking away. To what I have read and seen people do, is that they stop putting salt in when it start to break away and may put only a drop or two more if not flowing right. If anyone dissagrees then correct me. To me, making a lava lamp is trial and error and may take quite a few times and a long time to get it right the first time and then again I have seen people get it right the first time. they way it wounds, is that there is either something missing or too much of something. There is a site listed on the forums, can't remember were I saw it, and it gives a great tutorial. I found it. http://www.moltenmeditation.com/lava.htm I don't know which tutorial you are using, but my friend used that one and it worked great. but that was with his cloudy lamp. There is some-sort-of break cleaner in a homemade wax solution. look on my group, the chop shop, the second video down tells about it.

[Sondra]

OMG! Your video link helped us SOOOOOOOOOOOOO much!! We are going to start over and try it with the exact amounts instead of 2/3 to 1/3 brakleen to wax solution. Our wax passed the density test but it is not exact like this video. Thank you so much for steering us in the right direction. We will keep you informed and please note that we will be listing you in our references section at the science fair along with the rest of this site, so now the whole little town of Shiloh will know about you and this place LOL!

:X ty ty tyvm,
Sondra

[Brian]

:) Am glad that everything is looking brighter. Will be glad to hear of how it goes.

[Sondra]

Ok, here we are on this. We started over, measuring everything to a tee. Went SLOWLY drop by drop on the brine. Now can you explain to me how this is supposed to work after we get the salt water to the point where the blob floats? Because we got it to float but it just bobs and doesn't want to go all the way up and down. So are we not getting the water hot enough (30 watt bulb) or what? And what is the other guy (the one who came up the the written perc/wax solution on the website) talking about when he mentioned a coil and where, if we need one, do we have to put it. See why we are confused. If you don't know what I am talking about, go to http://www.oozinggoo.com/ll-form5.html .Retro states "The dishwashing liquid helps reduce the surface tension of the ooze slightly. If you don’t add any dishwashing liquid, the ooze will form one giant bubble. This giant bubble will rise up, and when it settles back down on the bottom, it will not connect with the coil. This giant bubble will just sit there, and the lamp will not cycle at all. With the addition of a small amount of dishwashing liquid, the giant bubble will flow down and connect with the coil." Since I am getting one giant bubble, I will add another drop of liquid soap, but could you possible answer the coil quesion for us?

Thanks so much for your time and help on this!

[Sondra]

Edit to the coil thingy, we bought a lava lamp to compare and also, daughter wanted one :D, we just got it in the mail, talk about timing. the coil is in the bottom in her lava, so do we need to add one to ours and could that be our problem or does it not matter?

[Brian]

The coil helps to heat the wax and seems to keep the lava flowing better and would help things out if you did have one. you could get a spring from a hardware story, stretch it out a bit and solder the ends together. If you can't find one, you could get a long piece of wire that is near the same thickness of the coil and wrap it around a pen or something and make your own coil. if you are totally out of luck, I could possibly send you one for free but it may take a while to get there.

[Sondra]

That is sweet but I make jewelry so I have that stuff lying around so that won't be neccessary, but thanks for the offer. We melted down the wax/perc and added the coil , solidified it again with the coil inside (just like her lava lamp came), all without the water, and we are now waiting to see if that helps. Also, we noticed while watching her new lamp, that maybe we might not have enough heat to get the lava moving, because our homemade lamp moves like the new lamp does before it actually gets to the max warm stage, so we are trying that now too. We'll have that part of our experiment going too. We were using a 30 watt bulb from her glitter lamp b4 and the site said to use a 40, but the 30 watt was directional so we thought it would work better than a typical 40, does that make sense? Anyway, we are going to be trying these things over the next couple days and we will keep you in the loop. Thanks again for the help and now for your generosity :). You are so sweet to be helping us. I don't know what we would do without your help, actually, yes I do, we would have moved on to something more boring :p TTYL

[Sondra]

Ok, here is the status, got it working TWICE! Problem is as soon as we try and cycle it the next day, dud. Weird thing is, we took the coil out and that is when it worked. Now, we can't get it to work at the Science Fair at this rate because even if it works the night before, it may not work then, see what I'm saying? Any suggestions? BTW: we are using the lava lamp's actual lightbulb and assembly since our bottle fits, that seemed to help too. That is only 25 watts but it makes the water and wax HOT so I think it is not a question of not hot enough. Could it be too hot because we have less fluid than our lamp? Our real lamp is 20 oz and our homemade lamp is around 16 oz. I know it has to be somewhat cooler on top so if I can't even touch the top of the bottle, that is a problem. Ok, tag, you're it :D

[Brian]

hmm, too low of wattage wouldn't work and a 25w seems to be a little too much for it. the only solution I see is that you could make-shift a dimmer for it. When it comes to that, I have very little knowledge on how to make one that could be portable for the science fair. Someone with household electriciy knowledge would be able to help you out better than I could. But since you described it working with the coil out, that tells me that the bulb is too high of a wattage for it. The problem is that they don't make an inbetween bulb between 25w and 15w. I am thinking that it would be somewhere around 18 - 20 watts would be ok for it but i don't think they make a wattage like that for that style of bulb, so a dimmer would be the answer. That way you can still have the coil in it and turn down the heat. if it gets why too hot, one of two possibilities would happen depending on your formula ratio. one, all the wax sinks to the bottom and look like a ball at the bottom or you would get one blob sitting at the top. sitting on the bottom could mean that it is too cold too but I don't think that is the case in your situation. if a dimmer is out of the question you could do one or more things. one, you could put the bulb further from the bottom of the glass. two, you could make ventilation holes in the base. those would be the most simpelest ways that I could think of to reduce the heat. you can also do both things to really reduce the heat if the other two don't work. ventilation holes should be placed near the glass or somewhere between the top of the bulb and the glass. hope that helps, I know I sound like I ramble on about things. If anyone else has an idea, it is a free forum to post.

[Sondra]

Ramble on please, it is helping us understand. My hubby can do all the electrical sides of things, so if we have to make our own base and such, so be it. I have a candle warmer that is 18 watts (heat wise) so I can check to see if that is the wattage needed and then we can see if that is still too hot and maybe 15 might work, who knows. We actually blew the 25 watt one last night because we had the bottle on top of it just like they did, but it got too hot, I guess. Just proof we are right here. I've seen dimmers that can go on the cord so we'll go shopping tonight and see what we can come up with. So you really think we need the coil back in there? I misspoke before, it worked with and without the coil. Also, the kid in your video said they forgot theirs and it was just to break up the wax but I think it helps to hold the wax down so it does the whole stretching thing going up, right. Gravity does it for down. I took it out (after it didn't cycle again anyway) figuring it didn't matter, but I am rethinking it. Well, I am going to try those things and let you know. ttyl