The Sad Story
This project reminds me of a lyric from the Kate Bush song, Cloudbusting - this
project is "like my YoYo that glowed in the dark, what made it special made it
dangerous, so I buried it." And what made Kate's YoYo special was radioactivity. The
radioactivity is what made it glow. Not the kind of glow you get from
a green Virgin Mary figurine or stickers of the stars and moon you put up on your ceiling
when you're 10. That's the type of glow-in-the-dark effect you get after a bright light
has to "charged" it for a while and then when you turn off the lights, it glows for
a few minutes and then quickly fades to a pathetic dim green that you might miss in
a dark room if you didn't already know it was there. No, this is the permanent
bright blue type of light that looks magical when you see it. How do I know? Have I
seen Kate Bush's YoYo? No. But while I was in grade school, a friend of mine
once showed me a glow-in-the-dark wrist watch he was given on a trip to Malta.
My first reaction to seeing it glowing in broad daylight
was wow, doesn't that waste the battery? Shouldn't you turn it
off? No, he said - it's a wind-up watch, it doesn't take batteries. No
batteries? How long do you have to hold it up to a light to get it to be so bright? I asked.
You don't. It just glows. No way I thought. He doesn't know what he's talking
about. I'm going to have to take a closer look at this. Let me see it I said,
motioning for him to take this curious item off his wrist so I could have a
closer look. I looked at it. There were no buttons on it except the winder to
set the time. And it glowed a bright blue in my hand. This was before there was
such a thing as an Indiglo watch - so I'd never seen anything glow quite like it
before. Wow, I thought, this is pretty cool. He seemed to be right - it just
kept shining bright no matter how long I cupped my hand over it. Can you get
another one I asked. Why do they have this cool stuff in Malta when I've never
seen anything like this here in Canada I thought. I turned it over to see what
it said on the back - that's when I saw it. Three triangles arranged in a circle.
I watched enough Science Fiction shows to know what that meant. This thing was
radioactive! I quiclky gave it back to him. What a moment ago was one of the
coolest and most curious things I had ever seen was suddenly death incarnate.
Don't you know what that symbol means? Don't you watch Star Trek? I told him
that I wasn't going to go near it again and I would get rid of it if I were him.
And by the way, don't come near me!
I couldn't believe they'd make such a thing.
It didn't even dawn on me as a possibility. But there it was. It was glowing,
just like you see in those documentaries of nuclear power plants - that eerie blue
glow in the swimming pools they keep for spent fuel bundles. And it had that
radioactivity warning logo on it! They weren't even trying to hide it! And
he keeps it on his wrist! Anyway, he got rid of it. Just like Kate did with her
YoYo that had the unfortunate side effect of eventually killing you. The funny
thing is I only remembered to ask him what he did with it years later. Such is
the fast-paced life of grade school - every day is a brand new day - no time to
think of yesterday. And to make this story even more anticlimactic - he claimed
to forget exactly what it was he did do with it. Well, all I can say is think
twice before buying a Maltese watch.
Well that's interesting, you may be thinking, but what's it got to do with Lava
Lamps? Well, what made my custom built Lava Lamp glow ALSO made it dangerous. As a result, I
recommend buying one at Wal-Mart. Don't try this project at home kids.
However, in the interest of science, here's what I did. First, I needed a nice bottle.
Since I didn't have a nice curvy bottle at home, I made a trip to my local grocery
store and found a suitably curvy Malt Vinegar bottle. I normally don't use malt
vinegar, but I told myself I'd make some fish and chips. Next,
I needed a halogen light bulb. A light bulb is important since it provides both
the necessary heat to make the whole thing work, and the light to make it pretty.
The light, after all, is what makes a Lava Lamp a lamp.
I used a halogen bulb because they are small and provide lots of light
and heat. I screwed the bulb into the base of an old
lamp I thought was suitably funky for the purpose. Next was the tricky part -
making the lava! Looking up info on the Net, I found what I needed to know.
OK, pay attention class, because here is what I found. Mineral oil has a
density somewhere between that of 70% rubbing alcohol and 99% rubbing alcohol.
That means that the Mineral Oil will float on one type of alcohol, and sink in the other type.
But if you mix the 2 alcohols just right, the oil will stay suspended in the middle.
So, I took a trip to my friendly neighbourhood drug store - and lo and behold, they had both the 70%
and 99% concentrations of rubbing alcohol. I don't know why you'd want one type
over the other, but seems like people have their favourites, so they sell both, They also
had the mineral oil. I'd wondered why they had oil at the drug store.
Turns out it's a laxative - making this a slightly embarrassing purchase.
Undaunted, brought the items to the cashier and was ready with my lava lamp story
in case I saw any trace of a smirk on her face. I didn't need to tell the story as it
turned out. They're very professional.
Upon inspection of my newly purchased items, I quickly
realized that all the items were clear. One can't have clear lava for goodness
sake I thought. Well, maybe that would be cool now that I think about it - but at the
time I wasn't having any of it. I needed to color my lava - and I wanted to
color it red. The mineral oil would serve as the lava - and the rubbing alcohol
is what it would be doing its lava thing in. So, how does one color mineral oil
red? Easy, use a marker. Well, not the usual way. Instead, I broke one open.
I broke open a red Sharpie marker and took the cotton wick thing that was inside
and dunked it into the oil. Hey cool - it worked! I had red lava! Now, if the
oil would just stay red and not leech into the alcohol it would be perfect. I knew
it was a long shot, but, sure enough, that's in
fact the way it worked. The oil stayed red and the alcohol stayed clear. How cool is that!
Now, the next step was the step that required some skill. Well,
patience and trial and error more than skill, but I like to say skill. This is
the part where the mineral oil and alcohol are mixed. The oil will float on top
of the 70% solution, but sink to the bottom of the 99% solution. So, what I did
was partly fill my vinegar bottle with 70% rubbing alcohol, pour in my now red
mineral oil so that it floated on the top, and then slowly added the 99% rubbing
alcohol until the mineral oil fell to the bottom. But no more that that! You there
in the back, pay attention! The idea
here is that when the oil and alcohol is heated from the bottom, the oil will
expand faster than the alcohol - which, in turn, will make it more buoyant and so it'll
float to the top. Things will be relatively cooler at the top of the bottle since it's
being heated from the bottom, and it turns out that the mineral oil will
contract and become denser than the alcohol near the top of the bottle, and so
it will sink. And, of course, once it sinks, the cycle starts again - and there
you have the magical part of the lava lamp.
I attached the bottle to the top of
the halogen bulb. In my case, it was easy, I just slid the bottle into the decorative
glass enclosure that surrounded the light bulb. Have a look at the video at the bottom of the page
to see what I mean. So, I topped off the bottle with more alcohol to almost fill it
(with as close to the proportions of 70% to 99% alcohol as I could) and then I
capped it with the bottle top it came with. I capped it since I figured the
alcohol would evaporate if I left the bottle open. I plugged in the lamp and
turned it on. It lit the room with a warm red glow. So far so good. I waited for it to heat up.
It took a
few minutes - but then something began to happen. The oil began to bubble. It
bubbled more and more and began to look quite spectacular - like a little
erupting volcano. This was a lava lamp like I've never seen before. The lava
went up and down like a real Lava Lamp, to be sure, but it also made a really interesting little
fountain of flaming lava that I'd never seen before. This was more of a LAVA lamp than the ones you get at
the store, I thought, because this lava was erupting! It was beautiful. I got my
camcorder out and started filming it.
A friend came over and expressed interest, so we watched it for a while,
mesmerized. But then came a voice of concern. Isn't it going to explode? she said.
Well, now that she mentioned it - it didn't seem impossible. It had been on for
perhaps 20 minutes without incident - but I couldn't guarantee it was safe. So
I unplugged it and decided to put it in the bathtub. It would be safe there,
behind the shower curtain and closed door. Well, now that I was in safety mode, I had a
thought that the bottle cap might be a weak point which could break - so I looked
around and found a tin can and put it on top. I thought in case the bottle cap
blows off, the can would contain the liquid from spraying out everywhere. I
closed the shower curtain, plugged in the lamp and shut the restroom door. I
thought I'd leave it there until morning - and if it survived that long, it
probably was safe. This seemed to satisfy my friend's fears so all was good.
I hooked up the camcorder to my TV and we watched my new cooler-than-cool lava
lamp on video a few times and we agreed that it was quite a beautiful and mesmerizing
thing. But then there was the bang. Quite a loud bang in fact. The lava lamp! I ran
to the restroom, flung opened the door, yanked the lamp cord from the wall and
brushed aside the shower curtain. My god, it looked like someone was killed in
there! There was red mineral oil all over the wall and ceiling. Bloody hell!
I looked down and the bottle
was still in one piece. The only thing that changed was that now the top was off and the bottle was empty.
Interestingly, It was still in the same place I placed it. Didn't even tip over.
Oh yes, and the can had moved. And had it ever! I found it next to the empty lava lamp,
and it was crumpled! I
couldn't believe it - it must have hit the
ceiling so hard that it literally crumpled the can! Man, that would definitely have put out
an eye, and the boiling oil and alcohol - I didn't even want to think about what would have happened if
I hadn't put it away in the restroom.
This could have been a really bad thing. I counted my lucky stars. Well, I said, I'm
glad I was able to video some of it while I could. I'm ever the optimist.
The blood red stains washed off the tiles no problem, but the ceiling... I
envisioned having to tell my landlord that no, I hadn't actually killed anyone in the
bathtub, it was an exploding lava lamp. Really it was.
Well, I'm no quitter. I know, this is where I should be saying I learned
my lesson and I'd never do something like THAT again. But instead, I'm pointing out
my stick-to-it-iveness. So what did I do? I looked at
the undamaged bottle, I looked at the remaining mineral oil on the shelf and I
looked at the bottles of rubbing alcohol. I picked up the plastic bottle cap and
noticed that it too had remained unscathed. It must have expanded from the heat
and blown off from the pressure inside the bottle. There wasn't even a crack.
So, I reasoned, if I reinforced the bottle cap with some tape or something, it
just might work this time. And, I rationalized, I now know a safe way of testing it...
So, off I went again dying the mineral oil with the innards of that Sharpie
marker, measuring the rubbing alcohol and oil out, and then finally capping the whole
volatile mixture off. I then
wrapped the cap as tightly as I could with duct tape. I placed the bottle back
into the lamp, plugged it in and placed it back into the testing
chamber. The testing chamber that now doubles as a recreation of what it must have looked like
after the
shower scene in Psycho. Well, theoretically, since I think they used chocolate syrup for the blood
in the shower scene since they could get away with stuff like that in the old black and white days.
And I don't think there was too much splattering in that scene either. But you get the idea.
That's what matters. But I digress... So, I again drew the "safety
curtain" and closed the door and waited. I
did some work, I surfed the net and when I thought enough time had gone by, I
cautiously crept into the restroom and carefully peeked through the shower
curtain. There it was, as beautiful as any screen saver I had ever seen. But
what's this! The bottle cap had risen up. Oh no! It could blow at any
time, I thought. I yanked the plug out of the socket and let it cool. I left it
for about half an hour or so and returned after it had time to cool.
I picked the bottle from the lamp up to examine it. I then took it to the sink and slowly
peeled away the duct tape. Hmmm, the
cap was indeed slightly unscrewed. The bottle was still pretty warm too, but
since the cap was loose, I thought I'd take it off to have another look at it.
Maybe I'd be 3rd time lucky. I slowly took the cap off, very slowly.
OK, whew, it came off without incident.
I started putting the bottle down on the counter, and before I knew what
had happened, the contents of the bottle shot out and covered my bathroom mirror and
wall with molten hot red lava! I stood there in shock for a few moments not
wanting to move in case something else would happen. Maybe the mirror would shatter, maybe the
toilet would explode for all I knew - because this shouldn't have happened! Well,
let me tell you, there was nothing
left in that bottle. One second it was full, next second - all over my walls!
So I slowly finished putting the bottle
down. Incredibly,
not a drop of the liquid had touched me. However, I now had a matching murder scene on
the other end of the restroom, but the important thing was that my guardian angel was still on the job.
I would have given that guardian angel quite a healthy raise if I could have. Instead, I
thought I'd give him a bit of a vacation and vowed not to perform any more
dangerous experiments for some time to come.
After my shock was over, and I had become a mild-mannered computer-simulation
advocate I looked into what possibly could have caused this to happen. From what
I gleaned off the net, it would seem that the liquid had become "super heated"
which means that it was hotter than was needed to boil the liquid, but, in the
absence of agitation or imperfections in the glass bottle, it had remained a
liquid. It just hadn't had the chance to start boiling, although it really wanted to.
In such a state, the slightest tap
or disturbance to the liquid could be
enough to set it on its way to boiling. And once it begins to boil, it really
violently boils - enough to completely burst out of the bottle onto my wall, in fact.
Ever since that fateful day, whenever I had visitors over, I felt obliged to explain what
had happened in the restroom lest they start getting their own
ideas of how my walls and ceiling got their red splattered look. Needless to say,
it never washed off. Did I mention you shouldn't try this yourself? My lawyer
friend tells me I should tell you that. Click on the links below to see a video of what once was.
Stay tuned for the microwave oven powered lava lamp...