Hobbies And Interests
Things You'll Need
Instructions
The Bottle and Stand
Select a bottle first, so that you know how big the stand must be. A tall, slender, clear bottle with a screwed on cap works best--for example, a wine bottle. The bottle being tall and slender promotes heat dissipation, which the heated, floating wax needs to cool and drop down to the bottom of the lamp to be heated again. Put another way, the temperature differential between the top and bottom of the bottle affords the temperature range so that the lava's density varies above and below the salt solution's density.
Cut a square or triangular hole in an aluminum pot's bottom small enough such that when the bottle is turned upside down, the pot supports the bottle. The pot will also house the heating bulb. You could cut such a pot with a circular saw or a nibbler tool. A triangular hole is easier to cut than a circle. While you have the tool out, cut a small triangle into the pot's lip. This will provide an outlet for the light's cord.
Plug a dimmer into an electric wall socket. Then plug the plug of the lamp socket into the dimmer. Screw a 35W bulb into the lamp socket. Do not turn the lamp on yet.
The Lava
Buy candles in the color that you want your lava to be. Break the candles up into small pieces, removing the wick strings.
Buy a couple of cups of perchloroethylene, also known as "perc." You may find a dry cleaner who will sell you a cup or two, or you can go to an auto parts store and buy brake cleaner that is 100 percent perc. An example is CRC Brakleen brake cleaner (289). About $5 worth is sufficient.
Pour precisely 1 cup of water into a clear jar (a different vessel from the bottle you selected in Step 1). Mark the water line with a grease pencil or tape and toss out the water. The point of this is to measure the melted candle wax later.
Boil a pot of shallow water. Set a second jar in the boiling water and melt a cup's worth of candle pieces inside.
Pour 1/3-cup of perc into the jar with the grease mark on it. Fill up to the grease mark by adding in the melted wax. The mix will be 1/3-cup of perc and 2/3-cup of wax.
Screw on the jar's cap to prevent splashing, and swirl the jar to thoroughly mix the perc and wax.
Balancing the Wax and Saline Densities
Pour a portion of the wax-perc mix from the jar with the grease-pencil mark into the clear bottle with the screw-on cap you selected in Step 1 of Section 1 (How much to pour in is a matter of judgment or trial and error. A wider bottle can take the full cup of wax-perc mix, but a narrow bottle may not be able to heat a cup of the mix enough to get it to float up through the water). Let the bottle cool for 2 hours, then fill it up with distilled water, leaving a 2-inch air gap at the top. Do not pour the water directly on the lava.
Set the bottle on the pot over the bulb. Turn the bulb on to melt the lava again.
Warm up some distilled water in a drinking glass in the microwave for 10 or 20 seconds. Dissolve as much pickling salt or Epsom salts in the water as possible. Do not use table salt, as its iodization clouds water.
Submerge a drinking straw 1 inch into the saline. Close the top of the straw with your finger so that a vacuum keeps liquid in the straw, remove the straw from the saline solution and drop the saline solution still in the straw into the bottle containing the wax-perc mix and the distilled water. Keep repeating this action with the straw, but don't go any faster than once every 10 minutes. This is important to give the salt time to spread out and take effect. Do NOT mix or shake the bottle to speed up the mixing. You know you've added enough salt when some wax ascends to the bottle's upper region.
Add two drops of food coloring to complement the candle wax and one drop of dishwashing liquid. Screw the bottle's cap back on. The detergent reduces the lava's surface tension so that it breaks up more easily.