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    Lava Lamp

    Uploaded by

    Roland Garcia Pelagio Jr.
    The document explains how to make a homemade lava lamp using vegetable oil, water, food coloring, and alka-seltzer tablets. It works because water is denser than oil so it sinks to the bottom, and the alka-seltzer reaction produces carbon dioxide bubbles that attach to the water droplets and cause them to rise up through the oil before sinking back down. Real lava lamps use a similar principle, but heat the denser liquid to make it rise and fall as it cools and warms.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Lava Lamp

    Uploaded by

    Roland Garcia Pelagio Jr.
    75 views2 pages
    The document explains how to make a homemade lava lamp using vegetable oil, water, food coloring, and alka-seltzer tablets. It works because water is denser than oil so it sinks to the bottom, and the alka-seltzer reaction produces carbon dioxide bubbles that attach to the water droplets and cause them to rise up through the oil before sinking back down. Real lava lamps use a similar principle, but heat the denser liquid to make it rise and fall as it cools and warms.

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    lava LAMP

    Original Title

    LAVA LAMP

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    The document explains how to make a homemade lava lamp using vegetable oil, water, food coloring, and alka-seltzer tablets. It works because water is denser than oil so it sinks to the bottom, and the alka-seltzer reaction produces carbon dioxide bubbles that attach to the water droplets and cause them to rise up through the oil before sinking back down. Real lava lamps use a similar principle, but heat the denser liquid to make it rise and fall as it cools and warms.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as doc, pdf, or txt
    75 views2 pages

    Lava Lamp

    Uploaded by

    Roland Garcia Pelagio Jr.
    The document explains how to make a homemade lava lamp using vegetable oil, water, food coloring, and alka-seltzer tablets. It works because water is denser than oil so it sinks to the bottom, and the alka-seltzer reaction produces carbon dioxide bubbles that attach to the water droplets and cause them to rise up through the oil before sinking back down. Real lava lamps use a similar principle, but heat the denser liquid to make it rise and fall as it cools and warms.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as doc, pdf, or txt
    of 2

    LAVA LAMP (DENSITY)

    What You Do:

    1. Fill the flask most of the way with vegetable oil.


    2. Fill the rest of the flask with water. The water will sink to the bottom under the
    oil.
    3. Add a few drops of food coloring; your choice of color. The food coloring is
    water-based, so it will also sink and color the water that is now at the bottom
    of the flask.
    4. Break an alka-seltzer tablet into a few small pieces, and drop them in the flask
    one at a time.
    5. Watch your lava lamp erupt into activity! As the reaction slows down, simply
    add more alka-seltzer.

    What Happened:

    A lava lamp works because of two different scientific principles, density and
    polarity.

     Density is the measurement of how compact a substance is - how much of it


    fits in a certain amount of space. (The scientific equation is density =
    mass/volume.) If you measure an equal volume of oil and water, you'll find that
    the water is heavier than the same amount of oil. This is because water
    molecules are packed more tightly and a cup of water actually has more mass
    than a cup of oil. Because water is more dense than oil, it will sink to the
    bottom when the two are put in the same container. Density is affected by
    temperature—the hotter a liquid is, the less dense it will be.
     Even though they have different densities, oil and water would eventually mix
    together if it weren't for polarity. Water molecules are "polar" because they
    have a lopsided electrical charge that attracts other atoms. The end of the
    molecule with the two hydrogen atoms is positively charged. The other end,
    with the oxygen, is negatively charged. Just like in a magnet, where north
    poles are attracted to south poles ("opposites attract"), the positive end of the
    water molecule will connect with the negative end of other molecules. Oil
    molecules, however, are non-polar— they don't have a positive or negative
    charge, so they are not attracted to the water molecules at all. This is why oil
    and water don't mix!

    Real lava lamps use a polar and non-polar liquid just like our homemade one did. In
    a real one, however, the densities of the liquids are much closer together than
    vegetable oil and water. The denser liquid sinks to the bottom, but the lava lamp
    light heats it up until it expands and becomes less dense, causing it to rise upward.
    As it gets farther from the light, it cools down, becoming more dense again until it
    sinks; then the cycle starts all over.

    Instead of using a light, in our homemade lava lamp we used alka-seltzer to power
    the lamp. The alka-seltzer reacts with the water to produce carbon dioxide gas
    bubbles. These stick to the water droplets. The water/gas combo is less dense than
    the oil, so they rise to the top of the flask. At the top, the gas bubbles pop and
    escape into the air, allowing the dense water to sink back to the bottom again.

    Lava lamps powered by heat are trickier to make and can use more hazardous
    materials. You can experiment fairly safely with things like rubbing alcohol and
    mineral oil or lamp oil. See if you can make a lamp powered by heat!

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