Homemade Lava Lamp

Homemade Lava LampLava Lamp is an electric lamp which contains the brightly colored substance. This bright substance rise and falls while changing their shape. Lava lamps give a good background decoration and grasp the attention of people. So, here you will learn how to a make lava lamp. This lava lamp won’t require electricity to operate. All the materials you will find easily in your kitchen.

Things You Will Need

  • A clear empty plastic bottle
  • Vegetable oil
  • Food coloring
  • Water
  • Alka-Seltzer tablet (tablet that fizz)

How to Make

  1. Fill the bottle about a quarter with water.
  2. Fill the remaining space of the bottle with vegetable oil, and keep it aside for 5 minutes. When oil and water become separated from each other, then proceed to next step.
  3. Add few drops of food coloring of your choice in the bottle. It will take some time to break-through the oil and the water.
  4. Break the seltzer tablet into four pieces and drop one piece in the bottle. Watch it sinking to the bottom.

When seltzer tablet will touch the water your lava lamp will start to work. When bubbles stop to form add another piece of seltzer tablet to water.

ENJOY!

How it works

When oil and water are mixed, they form two layer. The oil settles at the top, and water at the bottom. Because, oil is less dense than water, so it floats on water. When you drop the seltzer tablet to bottle it goes to water layer and starts to form bubbles by a chemical reaction. These bubbles go up taking some colored water with them. At the top of the bottle, air escapes and leaves the water behind, which falls back down. Doing so it creates a nice effect of a lava lamp that you enjoy.

Try It

  1. Try to make seven lava lamps with rainbow colors and start them at the same
home-made-flubber

home-made-flubberHave you watched Flubber movie 1997? If yes, then you know that in this movie Robin William makes a green rubber-like substance named “Flubber”. In this experiment, we will make flubber (It won’t talk! SORRY!) But you can play with it. You will also understand the science behind it.

Precaution: Always wear safety goggles and hand gloves when dealing with chemicals. Also, take the permission from your parents for the experiment, or involve them.

Things You Will Need

  • Warm Water
  • 1 cups of Elmer White Glue
  • 2 tablespoons of Borax
  • Green Food Coloring
  • Airtight bag

How to Make

  1. Pour ¾ cup of warm water and 1 cup of white glue in a bowl.
  2. Add 2 to 3 drops of food coloring in the bowl and stir the mixture with a spoon
  3. Pour ½ cup of warm water in another bowl, and add 2 tablespoons of borax in it. Stir the solution to completely mix the borax with
  4. Pour all the solution of borax in the first bowl, and stir the mixture well with a spoon.
  5. Pour all content of bowl in an airtight Close the bag tightly and make sure no liquid is leaking from the bag.
  6. Knead the mixture in the bag with your hands from outside for 5 to 10 minutes.

Your flubber is ready!

You can remove it from the bag and play with it. If your flubber is sticky then let it dry a little bit, then it will be okay.

How it Works

The flubber you made is a Polymer. You made it by mixing borax and glue together. Borax acts as a connector (crosslinking agent) for the glue molecules. When glue molecules are joined together and formed a large molecule chain you got a gel-like substance.

Try it

  1. Try to make a rainbow flubber. You can make it by preparing seven different flubber, but kneading all the seven flubbers together when they are still sticky.