Permalink Reply by Reed on February 7, 2008 at 10:31am
The website says the lamp has arrived in Soap Lake but they are seeking funds to reassemble and refurbish it. Does anyone know if this is a real lamp with goo or does the "mechanical" mean it is solid blobs floating that won't work like a real lamp?
looking at the mock up photos, it looks like you could isolate access to the platform at times, but i guess it still only needs one dickweed with a rifle and there's one hell of a mess.
i seriously wouldn't want to have to do the COSHH risk assment for that one! :O
I know I may be a spoil, but this thing is seriously getting on my nerves now!
The technical university of Munich (Germany) did an experiment in 2002.
The container of the "lamp" they tried to build was 7' tall and measured 1'3" in diameter.
They had to use a heating element, instead of a lightbulb/s, that took up between 1 and 2 KILOWatts and it also took a cooling device at the top to make the lamp work. Also bear in mind that the lamp was set up Insides! (Remember how a normal lava lamp might even be affected by the presence of draft?)
Maybe the most important results of their experiment are that:
- You can't build a humongeous properly funtioning lava lamp by simply increasing the scale;
- a supersized lava lamp, due to the physical limitations of all components, simply can't work properly because the circumstances present in a normal lava lamp can't be reproduced sufficiently.
That said, from now on I'll call the "Soap Lake Project" a Fraud and must suspect that the donations are not used as expected.
But of course I encourage Mr. Blake to come forward and prove me wrong!
And by that I don't mean proof for the existence and ownership of what's left from the "Target" decoration!
"That said, from now on I'll call the "Soap Lake Project" a Fraud and must suspect that the donations are not used as expected."
Well, in my opinion, the totally cool poster is worth the 15 dollar donation fee, even if the project is a bust - but they should be selling the posters for fifteen dollars, otherwise should the money not go into a real project, they could get into legal trouble for fraud.
There was a featured picture of this project posted by Bohdan recently. Reminded me of reading this forum post years ago. FYI, there is a revival of the 60' lava lamp concept. I've been getting my info from http://www.soaplakelavalamp.com. Some fun pictures of a revised concept. I hope they make it this time!