When assembling lava lamps commercially, the heating coil goes in first and sits on the bottom followed by the hot paraffin wax, and then the cold liquid solution, which is 2000 ppm mineral water with a 4% solution of ethylene glycol. A few drops of water color (or food coloring) may be added for the desired effect. The wax is colored with color chips. However, any craft store sells dye for coloring wax. Stay away from color pigments as they're only meant to color the wax surface and are useless for lava lamps.
@@artistwithouttalent No. 96% of the solution is mineral water at 2000 ppm and 4% is ethylene glycol. Because mineral water comes in a variety of ppm, anywhere between 500 ppm to 5, 000 ppm, it's best to read the mineral bottle label to see its mineral content. If you cannot find mineral water at 2000 ppm, then you can make your own by buying purified water, such as deionized or demineralized water, and adding salt to make a brine that's 2000 ppm. For example, ½ a tsp or 2 grams of salt to 1 litter of purified water.
2:33 My dad's name is Greg and he was just saying that he is one of the types of people too impatient for a lava lamp. He freaked out when you said Greg.
I’ll never forget my seventh grade science teacher being amazed that I used lava lamps as an example for convection currents and she then brought in seven lava lamps the next day (including two of mine) to teach all of her classes about the currents. The one time I ever felt smart lol
That reminds me of this one time when a teacher assigned us to find a video on the internet of a physics phenomenon that would then be muted and we would try to guess what caused it. I picked the music video Cymatics by Nigel Stanford. It went remarkably well, though after less than a minute it was unmuted and thoroughly enjoyed. It was even more fun afterwards explaining all the different experiments, from Cladni Plates, to Reubens Tubes, to Tesla Coils and more! The next day I was in the classroom next door and I heard the same song playing followed by an excited science teacher. The school shut down years ago, and that teacher had to move away. He still teaches though, and I wonder if he still uses that song
Clear wax in lava lamps makes the craziest patterns on the wall and ceiling. The way the light passes through it and shines on the wall is amazing. It's like a psychedelic underwater experience.
I was gifted a lava lamp with a missing bulb. I replaced it but didn't realize I needed one with a lower wattage. So it exploded. I learned all about what was in a lava lamp that day.
@@Asmusei google chlorinated wax and click shopping. fairly inexpensive for bags of the stuff. looks like its used as a flame retardant which is a bonus for something getting hot in your house. Im gonna guess nothing in that lava lamp can catch fire.
Pssst. Vodka is lighter than water. The story about using salt is a convenient lie. He really adds 180 proof ethanol to the water until the wax floats....
Not hating but there, of course, is a fine line with trying to make a video w/ less effort while also maintaining fun entertainment, if that makes sense
To be fair, as far as I can tell, script writing minimum takes over a week for this guy and I suspect a script like this one probably took a day or two and seeing as the set changes only take a few hours. I would say this does classify as a low effort video (compared to his normal effort compared to the effort of a lot of people put into their videos, this is still extremely high effort)
I love lava lamps because they provide movement in a static environment. There's movement when the eye scans thru the room, where everything else is static.
They also convey an easy measurement of time. Hour one is no bubbles, hour two is the wax towers, hour 3 is big huge globs and by hour 5 there's tons of tiny bubbles churning around. I can measure my evenings with my lava lamp.
I read somewhere that Google (I think), uses lava lamps to aid in generating truly random numbers. For reasons I couldn't possibly explain easily, a random number generator is a tool that's difficult for computers to emulate. But somehow, a camera pointed at wall full of lava lamps accomplishes this. I'm sure there's more than one video here on TH-cam that covers the details.
In the late 1970s I too was curious about lava lamps and, being a manager of an analytical lab, had ways to find out. What I discovered, if I remember correctly, was that the wax appeared to be a commercially available chlorinated paraffin wax possibly combined with paraffin to get the desired specific gravity. Since paraffin itself isn't a single pure substance but a mix of various long hydrocarbons, and not having samples of different chlorinated paraffins to compare it to, the exact composition was elusive but I was satisfied with what I had learned.
@@malcolmx2461 Only so far as determining that it was water. I didn't check for any detergents (e.g. soap) but perhaps with chlorinated paraffin, they might not be beneficial since they might cause some of the paraffin to cause cloudiness in the water phase.
I don't think I've ever laughed so hard at a TH-cam video when he jumps to the folding table and asks "did that cut work?" And then it jumps back again. Priceless.
@@JToTzLive Yeah, its a dangerous thing. From all of my experiences I would highly recommend you stay far away from the heating elements in dryers. Especially the ones that are only around $12 on amazon, and are easy to change the shape of for custom uses due to their coil design.
For UK viewers, when Alex says "paraffin", he means "paraffin wax", as used for candles. (In the UK, paraffin means the flammable liquid known as kerosene in the US and other countries.)
When I was a kid, I put kerosene and water and blue die in a bottle, put it on it’s side, rock it back and forth, you have the ocean waves. That was the 70’s
@@sh4dy832 I just wish North America had the term Perspex (hard clear plastic, like the kind you'd use for a window that needs to double as a blast shield).
@@WildBluntHickok From my experience in the Midwestern US, we call that type of plastic "Plexiglas" or "acrylic (glass)". In my mind I'd call thinner sheets Plexiglas and thicker sheets acrylic. So if I'm thinking of the same product as you then I'd personally call it "acrylic glass" in context of a shielded-wondow.
Speaking of this, I think he should do a nileblue style cleanup of all the steps he does. Would be nice to see his process for the removal of the brakecleaner from the various things that's been contaminated.
It should probably be mentioned that lava lamps themselves aren't exactly eco-friendly, using ~85 watts for hours on end (maybe 24/7) just for a decorative item.
Time capsule lava lamp - cleaning out my childhood home after parent passed, found my old 1970s lava lamp. It had been sitting on a closet shelf, unused for about 30 years . . . 2” of the liquid had evaporated, and after finding the proper W bulb, plugging it in and waiting for hours, the goop never animated. It appeared to be a lump of wax. It wasn’t a total loss - I also found my Pink Floyd wall posters which came packaged in their original release albums.
The company that made the original lava lamp is still around, still making the lamps by hand, in the USA. They would probably be happy to help you revive your vintage lava lamp.
Top tier script writing in this video. The overuse of the word "clearly" was great and the way you ended it with a nice bit of alliteration was just *chefs kiss* magnifique.
I just watched 24 minutes and 15 seconds of a gentleman explain how to make a Lava Lamp without giving me the absolute recipe. Amazingly enough, I was thoroughly entertained, and will share this with a few of my close friends. This guy has an amazing gift of explaining things articulately, and candidly, thus maintaining your interest and attention. Bravo, well done.
This may just be the Midwesterner in me, but I unironically really like the wine bottle and bucket lava lamp. It has a peculiar rustic charm one wouldn't normally expect from a lava lamp.
I'll never understand how you can rope me into deeply caring about stuff I didn't think I'd care about. Toasters, rice makers, lava lamps it's all suddenly extremely interesting to me.
That's the "Connections" part of the channel, which btw, is also a great series by James Burke, if you're into retro styles for sure (filmed for the BBC back in the 70's 80's)
Ah, brake cleaner, or as my father the hobbyist mechanic calls it, "cut finding spray". The subject of this video brings back fond memories from my misspent youth. I worked in an ISP network ops center where we had a lava lamp (to pass the time on the overnight shift, I guess). Once at the weekly NOC staff meeting, the manager chewed us out for misusing severity zero in the trouble ticketing system. Severity zero was for the worst problems, real future-of-the-company's-at-stake stuff, and someone used it for something that wasn't, causing the ticket system to page the manager at home in the middle of the night for what he didn't consider a good enough reason. That night about 10:30, the bulb in the ops room lava lamp burned out, so I performed the required lockout/tagout procedures for failed electrical equipment, opened a severity zero ticket for it (complete with all the troubleshooting steps and a recommended course of action, which was for senior personnel to get a purchase order and buy a new bulb at OfficeMax), then escalated it to the manager for good measure. The next afternoon when I got in, the lava lamp was fixed and the ticket was marked, "Repaired per recommendation," and closed by the manager. He never said a word to me about it. :)
@@ZGryphon Retaliation of this sort was my favorite way to torture senior leaders in the military for dumb shit they made us do all the time. Just make sure you're always at least technically correct, the best kind of correct!
We did it just to annoy an executive when he said in a meeting "haven't had a P0 in a while" which we then had an argument about if he had jinxed it by mentioning it, so we triggered one for a bit of a laughbon Friday afternoon. 🙂
@@mattstroker As he said, most substances expand when they melt. Ice does the opposite. It is more dense when it melts, which is why ice floats. If ice sank, lakes would form ice on the surface and that ice would sink, exposing new water to freeze. This would quickly result in a solidly frozen lake and everything in it would die.
This was the absolute best mix of: 1. Inspiration to create 💡 2. Cautionary guidance 🩹 3. Environmental mindfulness 🌎 4. Not taking big things too seriously ☺️ 5. Taking little insignificant things way too seriously 😁 Thanks so much for being a great hacker role model! 🛠️
I like that you show the whole process. I often find there is more to learn from the errors and the things that didn't work as expected than from "picture perfect" videos.
I don’t think there is a word that means the opposite of “buoyant”. Let’s just all agree that “sinkiant” is a real word now. Okay? Good. Update: Ah, I see now that I didn’t fully understand the meaning of the word. Alec’s statement at 3:57 is inaccurate. The accurate statement would have been, “... and thus it is no longer positively buoyant, but in fact negatively buoyant.”
This video inspired me to fix my cloudy lava lamp with bubbly wax (cheapest Chinese kind, about 15-20 years old) and I got it to looking almost as good as an expensive Mathmos one. What I did was the following: I ran the lamp till overheating to make sure all the wax settles at the bottom when I leave it to cool. I removed the liquid into a soft drink bottle, in case I can't get it to float on the new liquid I put the lamp bottle in a cooking pot full of water, standing on a mason jar top to avoid excessive heating of the bottom. Then I boiled the water and let it sit for about 20 minutes (from cold to turning off) to debubble the wax. Gave it some gentle swirling to mix it, but avoiding the wax on walls above the wax surface level. Left wax to cool. Cleaned lamp bottle interior with COLD water, and not pouring directly on wax (fill a few times and shake). Then cleaned the bottle interior with a cotton swab tied to a disposable chopstick to get any stuck wax/oily residue, first dry then with isopropyl alcohol. (If you skip debubbling in a crock pot and rinse with the wax that was cooled naturally after turni off the lamp, it may move and leave prints on the bottle walls, and those are a pain to clean. I actually cleaned the lamp before and after debubbling because of this). Then rinsed with cold water again to get the hairs from the cotton swab out. Filled the lamp with demineralized water and let it warm up for 3 hours. In my case the wax sort of started moving on water alone, but it was slow, so I added some saturated solution of Epsom salt, 1ml at a time, ended up being 7ml, but will vary with your lamp. Also added dish detergent one drop at a time, mixed with 1-2ml of water before adding to lamp. This way I have achieved a very clear lamp with nice flow that produces pillars and small and large blobs throughout a day of continuous operation, without using a dimmer (before it would end up having many small blobs at the top after 6 hours of being on). The amount of soap should be low to avoid having many small blobs. I dyed my water with ONE drop of liquid blue dye meant for epoxy resins, because I wanted it just to look less yellow that the yellow lightbulb light - if you want strong color, use more, but if you overdo it, the lamp will be either dim or the visibility will be poor, so be careful and wait a longer while after each drop of dye. And if there is wax stuck to glass, run the lamp for a few hours, let it cool and then carefully push it with a clean chopstick to make it fall off to the bottom.
About the clumping paint: the linoleic acid in linseed oil turns into a stuff known as linoxyn when exposed to UV light or heat, a plasticy substance which was used to make linoleum floor covering in the olden days. In woodworking, the same effect is used to protect and strengthen the surface of tables, countertops, etc. So that could very probably be the issue why the linseed oil paint started to clump after a while of exposure to a heat source.
For the STILL curious, they do this by having a wall in the lobby, not unlike the studio backdrop in this video, covered by row upon column of Lava lamps, with a camera pointed at the wall. The image data is then used to generate a number, which is constantly changing and just as predictably unpredictable as the bad jokes on this channel!
Oh yeah I remember that :D That just shows how fragile the balance in these really is. Any slight breeze dramatically alters the behavior as to be good enough for creating randomness for encryption (they use them additionally to other stuff but still).
Except he's wrong. Water does expand when it gets warm and it's responsible for some portion of sea level rise. It also expands again as it gets close to freezing, hence floating ice.
@@jakeaurod melting is the process of going from solid to liquid, not the process of going from liquid to hotter liquid. He was correct in his statement.
@@jakeaurod It's a tricky statement if you don't stop and think about it. It might be helpful to consider the opposite reaction: when water freezes, it expands. If you've ever left a water bottle in the freezer too long, this is readily apparent. Letting the frozen water melt will return it to its original volume, which means it contracts. Further warming the liquid water does indeed cause it to expand again, all the way up to becoming steam.
"Lower effort"? Did you not see all the ingredients he was trying and experimenting with? Or the fact that he had to completely move the good table out and an old experiment table in and then load up the old table with everything he was to experiment with? And how how he had made working lava lamps to have on display to show the results that can be achieved? He also had a lot of botched attempt examples on display so we could see just how much he had done in experimenting. He put a LOT of work and thought into this. So for you to say it was low effort just shows how much you just don't appreciate other people's time and effort. I hope you can grow to appreciate the capabilities, dedication through time spent and effort expended, and drive that others have. It is what makes us be able to have and understand all the things we have now.
as a chemist (albeit not a professional one by any means) this is so cool, and the whole impurities (notably trichloroethylene) being effected by salt and soap makes so much sense as theyre all similar to water in the way they all have charged regions in their molecules that would attract one another, and so would leach into one another
Hey Alec, I know the video’s a bit old but I hope you see this (and hopefully revisit this concept - your video helped convince me to splurge on not one, but TWO lava lamps and I love them!!) The actual chemical they use today in a lava lamp’s paraffin to make it denser is carbon tetrachloride. The chemicals added to the water are kerosene and polyethylene glycol. I hope this helps, and I wish you the best of luck experimenting with these, if you can get your hands on them. CCl4 was surprisingly easy to find in industrial purity on google, though I’m not sure about whether any licensing is needed to purchase it. Kerosene and polyethylene glycol are pretty easy to get - one is jet fuel, the other is antifreeze! I’m praying the stars align and you see this and the gears start turning in that wild, magical, quirky head of yours!
Actually, water does get more dense the colder is. However, when it turns to ice, the water molecules form up a lattice (properly to keep warm) which is larger. That's why ice floats, it is less dense than the water around it. At one time this fact was used to render civil war exploding shell inert. In winter, the fuse plug would be removed and water poured into the inner cavity. The hole would then be closed off. When the water froze, it would crack open the shell so the explosive charge could safely be removed. That's also why if you put a bottle or can in the freezer, it will crack as the water in it freezes.
Just an FYI, the paraffin wax in lava lamps now use carbon tetrachloride or also known as tetrachloromethane rather then tetrachloroethylene, to increase the density of the wax. However, the EXACT recipe for the wax is a trade secret not shared outside the manufacturer. They also sometimes will use mineral oil in place of the water depending on their needs. Just thought id share that.
@@railgap It really depends on what kind of wax it is as well, some use a mixture of paraffin and perchloroethylene, but some wax is more soluble in oil then others. For the liquid some lava lamps instead will use a mixture of water and dish soap, some will even add alcohol to the mixtures while others will use distilled water, pure salt and ethylene glycol (essentially antifreeze), all of which would change how soluble the wax is in the liquid.
I really doubt they still use carbon tet, as it's an extremely powerful ozone depleter and also very very carcinogenic. If they do use that then I do have concern for the environment in which he dumped the original lamp goop in, but honestly CCl4 is so uncommon and not actively being made (see the Montreal protocol) so I doubt that.
@@gideon7212 Wouldn't it only be harmful to the Ozone when put under pressure and released as a gas? Because just having a pool of it wouldn't evaporate fast enough to do any real harm, or I wouldn't think. If they stopped using it for any reason I'd think they'd do it due if it's that harmful to humans. But I'll check that out. Thanks for the Info.
I love that you stated how dangerous that automotive chemical can be. I used filler for the first time this year and I was gonna use it one day but after reading the label i needed to take a day to think about whether or not it's worth it and if i have the right ppe to maybe hurt my health the least
This is the first video of your channel I have ever seen and I can already tell I'm going to binge watch all your stuff! Had alot of fun watching buddy!
I don't know about your oven, but mine uses gas to get hot. the bulb just has to be able to survive a 500 degree oven (which an led bulb cannot). Or are we talking about easy bake ovens?
Indeed, I had a Plasma TV that produced about 500 watts of heat but since I needed heating in the TV room at night anyway, it was actually 100% efficient.
Re: coloring the wax, I suggest looking into a class of materials known as solvent dyes, also known as oil dyes. These are colored substances akin to food coloring, but rather than being hydrophilic and readily soluble in water and polar solvents, they are hydrophobic, and readily soluble in oils, waxes and non-polar solvents, which should eliminate the separation issues you were having with solid pigments. They're available in a wide variety of colors, and should give great results. You'll still need something to make the wax translucent like your previously mentioned titanium dioxide though, because these dyes are often fully transparent.
@@lourias That might work, but I doubt it. Crayons have to be absolutely LOADED with coloring to make a nice dark mark on the page with a very thin layer of wax, so it's usually solid pigments rather than soluble dyes. They don't need to worry about it falling out of suspension, because the wax is only molten for as long as it takes to be mixed and molded.
@@brendaleelydon Titanium dioxide is not transparent. It is a white powder. It is the substance that makes white paint white and cover the underlying surface's color.
"Don't try this at home" usually means, "This is dangerous, but also totally awesome, so definitely try it at home, just don't sue us when you lose an eye."
I've been having absolutely ridiculous, illogical, reasonless anxiety that has kept me inside for days. These videos have been a place to ground myself, and have made a big difference. Alec, the combination of unabashed nerdery, along with your silly humor, and fascination with the weird and obscure, creates a very safe feeling, friendly video. I appreciate it, and you.
"ridiculous, illogical, reasonless" is right. There are plenty like you and I out there. I've recently had to remind myself of the same thing. I think I'm going to hold on to the term "unabashed nerdery"!
@@Extramrdo The Learning never Ends, so wonder: May i recommend anyone some nice science-channel and education-channel one may not yet know? Yes, a very random question, sure, but why not?
Yeah, the disclaimer always makes me laugh. The full phrase should be: "Do NOT try this at home, but I'm going to tell you exactly how I did it anyway...", lol.
Just a thought... You were talking about the dish soap possibly affecting the clouding of the water. An alternative may be using rinse aid like jet dry. That product is almost exclusively surfactants. That would provide the desired effect of eliminating the surface tension of the water, while potentially eliminating contaminants as rinse aid is also designed to keep minerals suspended in the water instead of depositing on ware. I work for a major institutional chemical company. One of the things I do is manage and service dispensing equipment that injects rinse aid into commercial dish machines.
Ah yes, When i was 8 my mom bought me and my brother a lava lamp. The next day, my cousins came over, and the one who isnt so smart decided she would pick it up and shake it, smearing the wax all over the sides of the lamp where it solidified, and never worked right again, while looking ugly too Thanks alot, zemira. Its been 17 years and i still remember.
There are some grudges that just aren't worth holding. This one is. EDIT: I meant "this one IS worth holding". Didn't think about other ways it could be read. Betrayed yet again by my lack of foresight.
@@TrigonFilms I see that now. Unfortunately they had not amended their comment when I had made mine and I thought that they meant the opposite of their intended meaning. My comment was a joke stating my opposition to what I thought they meant.
@@Will_RM He is a really great mechanic, and overall just a great person. It took me a second to register what had happened, but I played it back and it was perfect.
@@Mqxwell Yeah he definitely is, he makes his videos fun to watch and you learn things at the same time. Also love seeing Mrs, O too. Overall great family and a very respected mechanic, something hard to find today.
hahah my wife was in the room when I was watching this yesterday, and right there at 9:45 I pointed and shouted HEY! South Main Auto!! She thought I was weird lol.
"I'm not gonna be using it [Brake Parts Cleaner] for its intended purpose..." I think you have just described the majority of times brake parts cleaner is used! And the Orchestra when you pulled the can out made me doublecheck if I was on the right channel!
I really like that you talk about how problematic the use and disposal of that chemical is and act accordingly. Even if the amount of chemical is small, it's the right mindset. 👍
Technology Connections: “This stuff has been banned in several states because of serious environmental and health risks.” Me: *looks nervously at the 55 gallon drum of brake cleaner that I use every day at work*
boss-at-machine-shop-in-the-80s: “Here, once you’ve strapped those parts on a pallette, use this stuff in this drum to degrease and clean them." me-new-hire-at-machine-shop: “Whoa, this stuff is pretty woozy making” boss-at-machine-shop: “Yeah, that 2-2-4 trichloroethylene is pretty strong stuff. Hmm. Maybe you should do that outside, dummy.” me-deciding-im-quitting-soon: “Yeah. Good tip. "
I've always been fascinated by lava lamps, so this was really interesting. I'm surprised at how complicated they are. (Not the lamp itself, but the formula.) I wonder how the inventor ever came up with it.
I've always figured that it was discovered purely by accident. Perhaps they were melting candlewax in a double boiler, and the wax that spilled between the two pots started doing the lava thing?
Lava lamp has always been a fascination and mystery to me, and your deep dive was awesome. I have my parent's original lava lamp, it is one of the first ones I think. It has this amazing starfield in the glass, the wax is an amazing lava deep red, and the base has holes in it to shine light on your walls. Ive never seen a better lava lamp in my life. btw, I love the shirt. I need one.
A lot of problems can be created with a "pokey thing" too... Scene: The babies cry in the back ground. The shotgun wedding wife is screaming her head off threatening divorce, alimony and taking of the house and is providing proof of her poly relationship with a tax inspector and hypotheticals writer's best friend and boss
Well, no effort was put towards my hair at least.
Edit to add: I definitely should have worn safety glasses! My bad.
Same. Needing a good cut myself.
I dunno, I think it suits your Figaro. 😁
How is your comment older than the video?
love you videos
I came down to the comments specifically to compliment your 'do.
"So be patient... Greg" -- I have to admit.. that tripped me out for a minute.
Were you not patient.... Greg?
@@petermarsella6537 lol
A patient with patience is a patient patient indeed...Greg
Got me too
This is why you shouldn't watch TC when you're stoned.
When assembling lava lamps commercially, the heating coil goes in first and sits on the bottom followed by the hot paraffin wax, and then the cold liquid solution, which is 2000 ppm mineral water with a 4% solution of ethylene glycol. A few drops of water color (or food coloring) may be added for the desired effect. The wax is colored with color chips. However, any craft store sells dye for coloring wax. Stay away from color pigments as they're only meant to color the wax surface and are useless for lava lamps.
Dude man bro thanks! Been looking to make a fat lamp
My guy stole the trade secrets of big lava lamp
When you say 2000 ppm mineral water, do you mean the lamp is 99.8% solution with the last .2% mineral water?
@@artistwithouttalent No. 96% of the solution is mineral water at 2000 ppm and 4% is ethylene glycol. Because mineral water comes in a variety of ppm, anywhere between 500 ppm to 5, 000 ppm, it's best to read the mineral bottle label to see its mineral content.
If you cannot find mineral water at 2000 ppm, then you can make your own by buying purified water, such as deionized or demineralized water, and adding salt to make a brine that's 2000 ppm. For example, ½ a tsp or 2 grams of salt to 1 litter of purified water.
@@jackdeath with your water solution do I still need brakleen in the wax?
The lava is outside the earth, just stuck in a lamp. That's why it's not magma.
So if I take my lava lamp into my underground fallout shelter does it then become a magma lamp?
@@chair547 Totally! Lol 🌋
@@chair547 yes. Yes it does.
New video pls kenny
wouldnta put money down on finding u here. e: come to think of it, i take that back
2:33 My dad's name is Greg and he was just saying that he is one of the types of people too impatient for a lava lamp. He freaked out when you said Greg.
lol x
Sounds like at least 50% of the Gregs in the world are impatient 😅
@@kiracomments-chca2747and 100% are danny gonzolez fans
That would’ve been awesome to see
I’ll never forget my seventh grade science teacher being amazed that I used lava lamps as an example for convection currents and she then brought in seven lava lamps the next day (including two of mine) to teach all of her classes about the currents. The one time I ever felt smart lol
I DID THE SAME THING IN SIXTH GRADE! My teacher asked me to bring in two of my lamps coin as well. I told her i could have brought more if needed💀
That reminds me of this one time when a teacher assigned us to find a video on the internet of a physics phenomenon that would then be muted and we would try to guess what caused it.
I picked the music video Cymatics by Nigel Stanford. It went remarkably well, though after less than a minute it was unmuted and thoroughly enjoyed. It was even more fun afterwards explaining all the different experiments, from Cladni Plates, to Reubens Tubes, to Tesla Coils and more!
The next day I was in the classroom next door and I heard the same song playing followed by an excited science teacher.
The school shut down years ago, and that teacher had to move away. He still teaches though, and I wonder if he still uses that song
this is so wholesome ❤
Awesome 😎
You see good enough, bro!
24 minutes on lava lamps. I'm in.
ok
My reaction exactly.
300th like
If he's in, I'm out...
Plus that hair for 24 minutes!
Clear wax in lava lamps makes the craziest patterns on the wall and ceiling. The way the light passes through it and shines on the wall is amazing. It's like a psychedelic underwater experience.
Those patterns are called caustics.
Oh wow man. Let me have another toke man. Got anymore chips. Far out man.
@@howieduin915 is that supposed to be funny?
@@philosophysique5419hahahah your comment definitely is
:o refraction!!!
I was gifted a lava lamp with a missing bulb. I replaced it but didn't realize I needed one with a lower wattage. So it exploded. I learned all about what was in a lava lamp that day.
Chemical engineer here: I suspect that there are chlorinated wax types for sale. These should have a higher density.
bump for the expert to get recognition =)
Bump
Any suggestions on common names for such waxes in order to purchase and test?
Agree
@@Asmusei google chlorinated wax and click shopping. fairly inexpensive for bags of the stuff. looks like its used as a flame retardant which is a bonus for something getting hot in your house. Im gonna guess nothing in that lava lamp can catch fire.
Poor Alec, everytime a bottle became cloudy he had to drink a whole new bottle. What a sacrifice for the craft.
Pssst. Vodka is lighter than water. The story about using salt is a convenient lie. He really adds 180 proof ethanol to the water until the wax floats....
@@geonerd I would seriously pay to watch him explain the mechanics of like a cassette deck or something after a few good swigs of that.
@@pathmada I think it was meant to be a joke.
@@geonerd *sinks
“No effort November.”
3 set changes and multiple lamp configurations later...
Not hating but there, of course, is a fine line with trying to make a video w/ less effort while also maintaining fun entertainment, if that makes sense
Lollllllllllll
To be fair, as far as I can tell, script writing minimum takes over a week for this guy and I suspect a script like this one probably took a day or two and seeing as the set changes only take a few hours. I would say this does classify as a low effort video (compared to his normal effort compared to the effort of a lot of people put into their videos, this is still extremely high effort)
I love lava lamps because they provide movement in a static environment. There's movement when the eye scans thru the room, where everything else is static.
They also convey an easy measurement of time. Hour one is no bubbles, hour two is the wax towers, hour 3 is big huge globs and by hour 5 there's tons of tiny bubbles churning around. I can measure my evenings with my lava lamp.
I read somewhere that Google (I think), uses lava lamps to aid in generating truly random numbers. For reasons I couldn't possibly explain easily, a random number generator is a tool that's difficult for computers to emulate. But somehow, a camera pointed at wall full of lava lamps accomplishes this. I'm sure there's more than one video here on TH-cam that covers the details.
@@FloydYESterZepyes I'm aware of this.
@@FloydYESterZep iirc this is Cloudflare at (I THINK?) their SF offices
@@apollofell3925tons of tiny bubbles means it’s overheating. You can get a dimmer to plug it into
In the late 1970s I too was curious about lava lamps and, being a manager of an analytical lab, had ways to find out. What I discovered, if I remember correctly, was that the wax appeared to be a commercially available chlorinated paraffin wax possibly combined with paraffin to get the desired specific gravity. Since paraffin itself isn't a single pure substance but a mix of various long hydrocarbons, and not having samples of different chlorinated paraffins to compare it to, the exact composition was elusive but I was satisfied with what I had learned.
A Chemical engineer also commented that a chlorinated paraffin would be the best bet
Did you analyze the liquid?
@@malcolmx2461 Only so far as determining that it was water. I didn't check for any detergents (e.g. soap) but perhaps with chlorinated paraffin, they might not be beneficial since they might cause some of the paraffin to cause cloudiness in the water phase.
@@PeterGysegem big brain time
Did you ever figure out how the wax was colored?
As an automotive technician, we spray that stuff on the "whatnot" way more than we spray it on brake parts
as a non-automotive tech, I hope "whatnot" means something different to you because I wouldn't spray that on any of my "whatnots"
@@timothyneiswander3151 lmao it burns pretty bad depending on which "whatnots" you spray it on.
@@joebuckman3697 "Ask me how I know!" LOL
I used to work with a guy who regularly used it to wash his hands. That was over a decade ago, so I assume he's died of cancer by now.
What is a "whatnot"?
Hair: 1950's
Jacket: 1970's
Shirt: 1980's
Lava Lamp: timeless!
?????
PROFIT
Humans Going Natural Style: 2020-202020
I;s
Jacket could also be 1950 though.... but yeah. we can all agree. the style he's sporting is ageless :).
Toaster: 1950s
Microwave: 1990s
Alec is basically a time traveller.
I don't think I've ever laughed so hard at a TH-cam video when he jumps to the folding table and asks "did that cut work?" And then it jumps back again. Priceless.
I always give my lava lamps a little taste test.
Shlorp the forbidden jelly!
OOOoOoOO DaNk MeMeS
@@jessepinkman1471 hyperlavalampemia.
@@Fjdjfjsz92938 BIG CHOONGOSE REDIT GOLD
How else would you know if its still a good lamp?
"Only use chemicals in ways they're meant to be used."
I'm a chemist, and I disapprove of this message.
The Chemicals are pretty chill and do what the F-lourine they like. They don't read the text books
From a *real* chemist, we expect an improved recipe for the wax.😎
*accidently creates many Batman villains
@@manoerinafanchannel3196 “mix to taste”
@@hireahitCA lmao
I would love to see a sequel to this with NileRed where they make the right chemicals for an oil lamp!
That would be so damn awesome!
And there would be proper disposal of chemicals!
Hell yes!!
Seriously, reach out to NileRed! How do modern lamps work without the nasty stuff?
@@michelhv Nilered disposes some waste by storing it.
Man this video is so good for entertainment purposes only, I definitely don't have a huge 8 gallon homemade lava lamp that uses this exact recipe.
My hero.
what kind of heating element did you.. not use?? just so i make sure to avoid it=]
@@JToTzLive Yeah, its a dangerous thing. From all of my experiences I would highly recommend you stay far away from the heating elements in dryers. Especially the ones that are only around $12 on amazon, and are easy to change the shape of for custom uses due to their coil design.
Mathmos, the original manufacturer in the UK used to make them - very large ones
For UK viewers, when Alex says "paraffin", he means "paraffin wax", as used for candles. (In the UK, paraffin means the flammable liquid known as kerosene in the US and other countries.)
When I was a kid, I put kerosene and water and blue die in a bottle, put it on it’s side, rock it back and forth, you have the ocean waves. That was the 70’s
why does the English language keep fucking up mineral oil products?
@@sh4dy832 I just wish North America had the term Perspex (hard clear plastic, like the kind you'd use for a window that needs to double as a blast shield).
@@WildBluntHickok From my experience in the Midwestern US, we call that type of plastic "Plexiglas" or "acrylic (glass)". In my mind I'd call thinner sheets Plexiglas and thicker sheets acrylic.
So if I'm thinking of the same product as you then I'd personally call it "acrylic glass" in context of a shielded-wondow.
@@sh4dy832 the uk and usa both use the english language
I appreciate how you talked about the environmental risks of this project and how you planned to mitigate them.
How 19 hours ago????
Probably Patreon
I don't
Speaking of this, I think he should do a nileblue style cleanup of all the steps he does. Would be nice to see his process for the removal of the brakecleaner from the various things that's been contaminated.
It should probably be mentioned that lava lamps themselves aren't exactly eco-friendly, using ~85 watts for hours on end (maybe 24/7) just for a decorative item.
It's pretty clear that this is clearly your clearest video to date.
Clearly.
How 20 hours ago
@@FiveSixEP Patreon supporters get early access 😉
With clear to understand jokes on top!
Instructions unclear, now I'm drunk on wine.
Time capsule lava lamp - cleaning out my childhood home after parent passed, found my old 1970s lava lamp. It had been sitting on a closet shelf, unused for about 30 years . . . 2” of the liquid had evaporated, and after finding the proper W bulb, plugging it in and waiting for hours, the goop never animated. It appeared to be a lump of wax.
It wasn’t a total loss - I also found my Pink Floyd wall posters which came packaged in their original release albums.
I Own that poster too!
Awesome.
Bullshit
I got these posters too. The DSoTM ones.
The company that made the original lava lamp is still around, still making the lamps by hand, in the USA.
They would probably be happy to help you revive your vintage lava lamp.
*"Water does the opposite because it's cheeky."*
jfc man, your deadpan deliveries are amazing.
November: No effort
Alec: **gets a chemistry degree**
you did it!
And changes the table. And keeps bloopers separate.
but he didnt say "convection current" even once :(
He's already gotten a chemistry degree: th-cam.com/video/1q4dUt1yK0g/w-d-xo.html
Top tier script writing in this video. The overuse of the word "clearly" was great and the way you ended it with a nice bit of alliteration was just *chefs kiss* magnifique.
ikr. I thought he forgot the word "obviously, apparently, certainly" or such, but then realized he knew exactly what he was doing
I bought a lava lamp 23 years ago and I still love it. One of the best purchases I have made. 10/10 would recommend
I just watched 24 minutes and 15 seconds of a gentleman explain how to make a Lava Lamp without giving me the absolute recipe. Amazingly enough, I was thoroughly entertained, and will share this with a few of my close friends.
This guy has an amazing gift of explaining things articulately, and candidly, thus maintaining your interest and attention.
Bravo, well done.
This may just be the Midwesterner in me, but I unironically really like the wine bottle and bucket lava lamp. It has a peculiar rustic charm one wouldn't normally expect from a lava lamp.
Yeah, I really like it for the novelty. It's kind of cool.
"Peculiar rustic charm"? You should thank your lucky stars you've never been to the Napa Valley.
It's not just the Midwesterner in you.
@@Chaos89Pit's the MURICA
@@robertcarson7871 Nope... 😊🇨🇦
I'll never understand how you can rope me into deeply caring about stuff I didn't think I'd care about. Toasters, rice makers, lava lamps it's all suddenly extremely interesting to me.
We don't really like things, we like people.
That's the "Connections" part of the channel, which btw, is also a great series by James Burke, if you're into retro styles for sure (filmed for the BBC back in the 70's 80's)
Lawyers watching this and having chills with your beautifully delivered disclaimer
If you're gonna try powdered dyes, I humbly request the opportunity to see a lava lamp made with Stuart Semple's Pinkest Pink pigment.
Yes
Or vantablack
@@ExpiredCartonOfEggNogg vantablack isnt a powder. its super expensive, and its an array of carbon nanotubes. it has to be applied in a vacuum
4th'd. Please. Yes please.
'course, now that I have this video I might just do it myself....
@@SomeRandomPiggo i think they mean black 3.0, also by Stuart.
“The way they work is stupidly simply, but at the same time surprisingly complicated” is the motto of this channel
This needs to be on a T-shirt and other channel merch. I’d buy one.
Ah, brake cleaner, or as my father the hobbyist mechanic calls it, "cut finding spray".
The subject of this video brings back fond memories from my misspent youth. I worked in an ISP network ops center where we had a lava lamp (to pass the time on the overnight shift, I guess). Once at the weekly NOC staff meeting, the manager chewed us out for misusing severity zero in the trouble ticketing system. Severity zero was for the worst problems, real future-of-the-company's-at-stake stuff, and someone used it for something that wasn't, causing the ticket system to page the manager at home in the middle of the night for what he didn't consider a good enough reason.
That night about 10:30, the bulb in the ops room lava lamp burned out, so I performed the required lockout/tagout procedures for failed electrical equipment, opened a severity zero ticket for it (complete with all the troubleshooting steps and a recommended course of action, which was for senior personnel to get a purchase order and buy a new bulb at OfficeMax), then escalated it to the manager for good measure. The next afternoon when I got in, the lava lamp was fixed and the ticket was marked, "Repaired per recommendation," and closed by the manager. He never said a word to me about it. :)
_SEVERITY ZERO INCIDENT: FAILED ELECTRICAL EQUIPMENT_
Manager: "Oh my god! What failed?"
You: ˡᵃᵛᵃ ˡᵃᵐᵖ
Yikes you were quite a terror eh?
@@frother Eh, he had it coming, bitching out the whole crew for one guy's honest mistake.
@@ZGryphon Retaliation of this sort was my favorite way to torture senior leaders in the military for dumb shit they made us do all the time. Just make sure you're always at least technically correct, the best kind of correct!
We did it just to annoy an executive when he said in a meeting "haven't had a P0 in a while" which we then had an argument about if he had jinxed it by mentioning it, so we triggered one for a bit of a laughbon Friday afternoon. 🙂
3:00 Fun fact, if water wasn't "cheeky" in this way, aquatic life could not exist in cold climates because lakes would freeze solid.
Please explain?
@@mattstroker As he said, most substances expand when they melt. Ice does the opposite. It is more dense when it melts, which is why ice floats.
If ice sank, lakes would form ice on the surface and that ice would sink, exposing new water to freeze. This would quickly result in a solidly frozen lake and everything in it would die.
@@middle-aged-gamer Also keeps the water at the bottom of the lake around 4 celcius as that's when it's the densest.
Bouyant and "sinkyant", amazing. Your sense of humor is finely tuned to my personality, I'm glad I've found your channel.
This was the absolute best mix of:
1. Inspiration to create 💡
2. Cautionary guidance 🩹
3. Environmental mindfulness 🌎
4. Not taking big things too seriously ☺️
5. Taking little insignificant things way too seriously 😁
Thanks so much for being a great hacker role model! 🛠️
Never expected to see Deviant here.
yeah guess deviant picked him up in the algorithm
You have a tendency to show up in the good places
I'd never thought about what was in brake cleaner before actually. Assumed it was a more concentrated degreaser.
What?
"I've replaced the goop in this lamp with my very own!"
Sir, the internet would like a word with you.
I was searching for this quote in the comments. I am not disappointed.
at least he said goop and not goo
"god that's hot"
t h e j a r
@@DaeZey "don't touch the bottom" (without asking permission first, I guess)
I like that you show the whole process. I often find there is more to learn from the errors and the things that didn't work as expected than from "picture perfect" videos.
I don’t think there is a word that means the opposite of “buoyant”. Let’s just all agree that “sinkiant” is a real word now. Okay? Good.
Update: Ah, I see now that I didn’t fully understand the meaning of the word. Alec’s statement at 3:57 is inaccurate. The accurate statement would have been, “... and thus it is no longer positively buoyant, but in fact negatively buoyant.”
anchorant. an anchor is the opposite of a buoy
Things can just be more or less buoyant
Girlant
@@Hephera i would simply say dense. Not really the opposite of buoyant since it relative to what’s being mixed, but gets general point across.
@@jasonjayalap Guirlant, u meant
Your editing is always ridiculously on point. It's clear you plan so far ahead and yet are hard on yourself. 10/10 channel
When TC's "no effort" November beats other channels' high effort rest of the year
This video inspired me to fix my cloudy lava lamp with bubbly wax (cheapest Chinese kind, about 15-20 years old) and I got it to looking almost as good as an expensive Mathmos one. What I did was the following:
I ran the lamp till overheating to make sure all the wax settles at the bottom when I leave it to cool.
I removed the liquid into a soft drink bottle, in case I can't get it to float on the new liquid
I put the lamp bottle in a cooking pot full of water, standing on a mason jar top to avoid excessive heating of the bottom. Then I boiled the water and let it sit for about 20 minutes (from cold to turning off) to debubble the wax. Gave it some gentle swirling to mix it, but avoiding the wax on walls above the wax surface level.
Left wax to cool.
Cleaned lamp bottle interior with COLD water, and not pouring directly on wax (fill a few times and shake). Then cleaned the bottle interior with a cotton swab tied to a disposable chopstick to get any stuck wax/oily residue, first dry then with isopropyl alcohol. (If you skip debubbling in a crock pot and rinse with the wax that was cooled naturally after turni off the lamp, it may move and leave prints on the bottle walls, and those are a pain to clean. I actually cleaned the lamp before and after debubbling because of this).
Then rinsed with cold water again to get the hairs from the cotton swab out.
Filled the lamp with demineralized water and let it warm up for 3 hours. In my case the wax sort of started moving on water alone, but it was slow, so I added some saturated solution of Epsom salt, 1ml at a time, ended up being 7ml, but will vary with your lamp. Also added dish detergent one drop at a time, mixed with 1-2ml of water before adding to lamp.
This way I have achieved a very clear lamp with nice flow that produces pillars and small and large blobs throughout a day of continuous operation, without using a dimmer (before it would end up having many small blobs at the top after 6 hours of being on). The amount of soap should be low to avoid having many small blobs.
I dyed my water with ONE drop of liquid blue dye meant for epoxy resins, because I wanted it just to look less yellow that the yellow lightbulb light - if you want strong color, use more, but if you overdo it, the lamp will be either dim or the visibility will be poor, so be careful and wait a longer while after each drop of dye. And if there is wax stuck to glass, run the lamp for a few hours, let it cool and then carefully push it with a clean chopstick to make it fall off to the bottom.
The astounding amount of alliterations is ambitious and amazing.
Accurate.
Acceptable application of accessment and accumen.
@@brysoncherry9884 Another astounding and amazing use of the American Alliteration.
Whose alliterate?
@@robertives973 Abundantly aware of what you're attempting to achieve.
About the clumping paint: the linoleic acid in linseed oil turns into a stuff known as linoxyn when exposed to UV light or heat, a plasticy substance which was used to make linoleum floor covering in the olden days. In woodworking, the same effect is used to protect and strengthen the surface of tables, countertops, etc. So that could very probably be the issue why the linseed oil paint started to clump after a while of exposure to a heat source.
I love how there is always someone who is actually an expert on the topic.
oh, so that's why it's called linoleum
Raw Linseed Oil vs Boiled Linseed Oil. What do you prefer in the Lava Lamp application?
Maybe a flax oil base and raw coloring agents? Might need a mortar and pestle to mix them real well first.
@@lancejobs Interestingly, linseed oil is from ... linen, also known as flax. Flax oil is linseed oil.
"water does the opposite because it's cheeky"
Idk why but that got me good
2:09 flava flamps
I *really* don't think you're wrapping your head around this "no effort" concept. You made a lava lamp from scratch!
Several of them!
But he didn't comb his hair.
@@MudakTheMultiplier that's just the result of emptying a few wine bottles.
"Lava lamps are useless."
Cloudflare's SSL lab: hold my beer
For the interested: Tom Scott - th-cam.com/video/1cUUfMeOijg/w-d-xo.html
For the STILL curious, they do this by having a wall in the lobby, not unlike the studio backdrop in this video, covered by row upon column of Lava lamps, with a camera pointed at the wall.
The image data is then used to generate a number, which is constantly changing and just as predictably unpredictable as the bad jokes on this channel!
That’s why 160,000 spent 25 minutes watching this
That’s 66,666 man hours
Or 2,777 man days
Or 7.6 years!
Oh yeah I remember that :D That just shows how fragile the balance in these really is. Any slight breeze dramatically alters the behavior as to be good enough for creating randomness for encryption (they use them additionally to other stuff but still).
4:00 - “Sinkient!” Excellent.
8:41 Totally missed an opportunity to call it "dark orange."
Orange with context!
Or brag about how he actually made a brown light
"...our friend physics..."
No friend of mine, only been holding me down.
I feel the gravity of your situation
Inertia keeps me from befriending physics.
See yourself out
Haha... Entropy... 😅
Actually he's been pushing you down...
"The wax expands when it melts. Water does the opposite because it's cheeky"
-Most underrated science side comment
Except he's wrong. Water does expand when it gets warm and it's responsible for some portion of sea level rise. It also expands again as it gets close to freezing, hence floating ice.
@@jakeaurod he is not wrong. Water does contract when it melts. He didn't say liquid water contracts when it gets heated.
@@jakeaurod melting is the process of going from solid to liquid, not the process of going from liquid to hotter liquid. He was correct in his statement.
@@jakeaurod It's a tricky statement if you don't stop and think about it. It might be helpful to consider the opposite reaction: when water freezes, it expands. If you've ever left a water bottle in the freezer too long, this is readily apparent. Letting the frozen water melt will return it to its original volume, which means it contracts. Further warming the liquid water does indeed cause it to expand again, all the way up to becoming steam.
@@jakeaurod Frozen water contracts when turning into liquid water. Liquid water turning to hotter liquid water expands.
This guy is so good at addressing the odd, random curiosity we all have. Most importantly, he answers every question and you’re never left wondering.
I actually enjoy these "lower effort" videos a lot too, would even say similar if not the same as the higher quality ones.
‘Lower effort’ just means fewer outtakes at the end 😜
"Lower effort"? Did you not see all the ingredients he was trying and experimenting with? Or the fact that he had to completely move the good table out and an old experiment table in and then load up the old table with everything he was to experiment with? And how how he had made working lava lamps to have on display to show the results that can be achieved? He also had a lot of botched attempt examples on display so we could see just how much he had done in experimenting.
He put a LOT of work and thought into this. So for you to say it was low effort just shows how much you just don't appreciate other people's time and effort. I hope you can grow to appreciate the capabilities, dedication through time spent and effort expended, and drive that others have. It is what makes us be able to have and understand all the things we have now.
@@CivilEngineerWroxton He's going off of what was said by Alec said himself for videos put in November.
@@CivilEngineerWroxton Literally watch the first 3 seconds of the video to see why I wrote this comment :)
"No Effort November"
Goes through all the effort of creating a DIY Lava Lamp
I appreciate that you went into detail on responsibly disposing of the “ingredients”
as a chemist (albeit not a professional one by any means) this is so cool, and the whole impurities (notably trichloroethylene) being effected by salt and soap makes so much sense as theyre all similar to water in the way they all have charged regions in their molecules that would attract one another, and so would leach into one another
a question, i want to make a lava lamp but wax seems hard to increase its density, then, how can i safely and legally make water lighter?
This sounds like the perfect episode to follow up with a NileRed response as they try make aspirin from a lava lamp or something.
I was thinking this would be a great one for Nile Red to get involved with.
@@Adenzel And as result one for TC to be ruined! Don't invite children into adult party!
@@Adenzel 😍😝😍😊😊😊😊😊😴😐
@@gokhankardas2160 😐😕🤔😏😜🤪😂🤣🤤
0 virus
Millions AWAKE
"I've replaced this lamp's goop with my very own."
Finally found the comment I was looking for.
@@danielholtzman2582 Welcome Home.
I've done this before...
Oh god no
"I reject a reality and substitute my own"
I had a lava lamp with red wax, a volcano casing and dinosaurs around the base. It was the best
That sure sounds like the king og lava lamps
Same here. The light shown through the lava around the dinosaurs and had a super cool glow
I had one like that but without dinosaurs. Some superglue and the toy dispenser at the supermarket can fix that, though!
I just Googled *dinosaur volcano lava lamp* - was not dissapointed..! =)
~♡
Hey Alec, I know the video’s a bit old but I hope you see this (and hopefully revisit this concept - your video helped convince me to splurge on not one, but TWO lava lamps and I love them!!)
The actual chemical they use today in a lava lamp’s paraffin to make it denser is carbon tetrachloride. The chemicals added to the water are kerosene and polyethylene glycol. I hope this helps, and I wish you the best of luck experimenting with these, if you can get your hands on them. CCl4 was surprisingly easy to find in industrial purity on google, though I’m not sure about whether any licensing is needed to purchase it. Kerosene and polyethylene glycol are pretty easy to get - one is jet fuel, the other is antifreeze!
I’m praying the stars align and you see this and the gears start turning in that wild, magical, quirky head of yours!
"Most substances expand when they melt, water does the opposite because it's cheeky" i cracked upp
Yeah, it’s the polar bonds that make it “cheeky”.
I almost rolled out of my bed
SO cheeky!
Actually, water does get more dense the colder is. However, when it turns to ice, the water molecules form up a lattice (properly to keep warm) which is larger. That's why ice floats, it is less dense than the water around it. At one time this fact was used to render civil war exploding shell inert. In winter, the fuse plug would be removed and water poured into the inner cavity. The hole would then be closed off. When the water froze, it would crack open the shell so the explosive charge could safely be removed. That's also why if you put a bottle or can in the freezer, it will crack as the water in it freezes.
@@andrewgillis3073 Water also gets less dense going from 4°C to 0°C
"It is no longer buoyant, but, in fact, sinkant."
I love these videos.
Just an FYI, the paraffin wax in lava lamps now use carbon tetrachloride or also known as tetrachloromethane rather then tetrachloroethylene, to increase the density of the wax. However, the EXACT recipe for the wax is a trade secret not shared outside the manufacturer. They also sometimes will use mineral oil in place of the water depending on their needs. Just thought id share that.
mineral oil dissolves wax.
@@railgap It really depends on what kind of wax it is as well, some use a mixture of paraffin and perchloroethylene, but some wax is more soluble in oil then others. For the liquid some lava lamps instead will use a mixture of water and dish soap, some will even add alcohol to the mixtures while others will use distilled water, pure salt and ethylene glycol (essentially antifreeze), all of which would change how soluble the wax is in the liquid.
I really doubt they still use carbon tet, as it's an extremely powerful ozone depleter and also very very carcinogenic. If they do use that then I do have concern for the environment in which he dumped the original lamp goop in, but honestly CCl4 is so uncommon and not actively being made (see the Montreal protocol) so I doubt that.
@@gideon7212 Wouldn't it only be harmful to the Ozone when put under pressure and released as a gas? Because just having a pool of it wouldn't evaporate fast enough to do any real harm, or I wouldn't think. If they stopped using it for any reason I'd think they'd do it due if it's that harmful to humans. But I'll check that out. Thanks for the Info.
I think I’ll just buy one and make DIY Brownies instead
I love that you stated how dangerous that automotive chemical can be. I used filler for the first time this year and I was gonna use it one day but after reading the label i needed to take a day to think about whether or not it's worth it and if i have the right ppe to maybe hurt my health the least
There's an art product called "encaustic." It's basically pigmented wax, I'd look into that.
This "no effort" video is more effort than I've ever put into anything
Yep, apparently there are some very different scales for effort.
"It is no longer buoyant, but, in fact, sinkyant!"
Don't you mean, "Floatn't"?
Buoyan't
gurlant?
"Densant" 🙂 is the correct term for sinkosity! Don't you got hedukashun? 😉
@@lightningslim oh I'm sorry Mr. Teach, I understand that we're not allowed to do jokes in the TH-cam Comment Section classroom
@@dreska255 Buoyain’t
This is the first video of your channel I have ever seen and I can already tell I'm going to binge watch all your stuff! Had alot of fun watching buddy!
The thing about tungsten fillament bulbs in ovens: They are not inefficent there as the goal of the operation is to get things hot.
I don't know about your oven, but mine uses gas to get hot. the bulb just has to be able to survive a 500 degree oven (which an led bulb cannot). Or are we talking about easy bake ovens?
When he grabbed the lamp I immediately thought of Tom Hanks in "Taxi".
As long as the heat is on in the house, the extraneous heat from a Lava Lamp is nothing to worry about. I don't have air conditioning.
@@sambolino44 f
Indeed, I had a Plasma TV that produced about 500 watts of heat but since I needed heating in the TV room at night anyway, it was actually 100% efficient.
Re: coloring the wax, I suggest looking into a class of materials known as solvent dyes, also known as oil dyes. These are colored substances akin to food coloring, but rather than being hydrophilic and readily soluble in water and polar solvents, they are hydrophobic, and readily soluble in oils, waxes and non-polar solvents, which should eliminate the separation issues you were having with solid pigments. They're available in a wide variety of colors, and should give great results.
You'll still need something to make the wax translucent like your previously mentioned titanium dioxide though, because these dyes are often fully transparent.
Thank you. I knew they existed, but did no know the name.
Another guy just suggested using crayons. Edit: another poster says the colors will come out off the crayons.
@@lourias That might work, but I doubt it. Crayons have to be absolutely LOADED with coloring to make a nice dark mark on the page with a very thin layer of wax, so it's usually solid pigments rather than soluble dyes. They don't need to worry about it falling out of suspension, because the wax is only molten for as long as it takes to be mixed and molded.
Couldn't one just use a bit of the titanium dioxide mixed with the solvent dye to achieve the desired translucency?
@@brendaleelydon Titanium dioxide is not transparent. It is a white powder. It is the substance that makes white paint white and cover the underlying surface's color.
Saying "do not try this at home" in covid times almost sounds like trolling.
It's also the best kind of "Do not try this at home" because it's immediately followed by how exactly to do it at home.
There was a LavaLamp caused death. Some guy heated one on a stove and the burst glass caused a fatal injury. Use only 40w incandescent bulb.
"Don't try this at home" usually means, "This is dangerous, but also totally awesome, so definitely try it at home, just don't sue us when you lose an eye."
I love the fact that you went into detail describing what a punt is on a bottle. It just shows your attention to detail
Also gotta be careful not to EVER let any of the brake cleaner burn, or you create phosgene.
It's not great!
Oh god that's a horrifying thought
@@KurosakiYukigo yeah there's been accidents where welders have ignited residue and ended up in the hospital
@@christianelzey9703 Or worse, World War I.
Thank you very much! I was not aware of that risk.
I've been having absolutely ridiculous, illogical, reasonless anxiety that has kept me inside for days. These videos have been a place to ground myself, and have made a big difference. Alec, the combination of unabashed nerdery, along with your silly humor, and fascination with the weird and obscure, creates a very safe feeling, friendly video. I appreciate it, and you.
If you do keep it bottled up, use aniline dye. which mixes with the anxiety and not a pigment which consists of solid peeves suspended in fear.
"ridiculous, illogical, reasonless" is right.
There are plenty like you and I out there.
I've recently had to remind myself of the same thing.
I think I'm going to hold on to the term "unabashed nerdery"!
@@Extramrdo The Learning never Ends,
so wonder:
May i recommend anyone some nice science-channel
and education-channel one may not yet know?
Yes, a very random question, sure, but why not?
We've been conditioned to feel like that. Turn off the TV 😉
*comfort video*
:) 💆🛀💅
"Do *_NOT_* try this at home!"
Me, a scientist & a dumbass: "I wanna try it at home."
Na, just do it at work.
Yeah, the disclaimer always makes me laugh. The full phrase should be:
"Do NOT try this at home, but I'm going to tell you exactly how I did it anyway...", lol.
you’re not a scientist adam atomic apple.
I always call my buddy and say " it says do not try this at home can I come over"
@@deeskman1549 do u know him? I thought not. Because you would not know
Just a thought... You were talking about the dish soap possibly affecting the clouding of the water. An alternative may be using rinse aid like jet dry. That product is almost exclusively surfactants. That would provide the desired effect of eliminating the surface tension of the water, while potentially eliminating contaminants as rinse aid is also designed to keep minerals suspended in the water instead of depositing on ware.
I work for a major institutional chemical company. One of the things I do is manage and service dispensing equipment that injects rinse aid into commercial dish machines.
Ah, my favorite nerd talking endlessly about stuff I never cared about, and I just can't stop listening and want even more. How do you do that?
Hones interest and joy for the world.
Technology Connections: Hmm, do I start a tech channel or a freeform poetry channel? ... Why not both!
"Honey, what are you doing?"
"Nothing, just putting a bowl of candle wax mixed with brake cleaner in a toaster oven."
"Why?"
"Ummmmm..."
*_TO SAVE THE WORLD_*
I was hungry, that's why
How the hell do you fit a bowl in a toaster?
@@Blue-Maned_Hawk VERY small bowl!
@@Blue-Maned_Hawk it doubles as an oven. He's baking it.
Love the way you look at the lava lamp at 19:30. Really brings home the hypnotic appeal of the lava lamp.
I loved the sound effect when you unveiled the brake parts cleaner, as a South Main Auto fan I laughed out loud when that happened.
Yes, but it wasn't quite the right sound effect, probably due to the impurities.
Eric O would be proud.
@@Graham_Wideman Maybe not exact, but close enough for a laugh. :)
9:42 Yep, I bet Eric O would get a kick out of it
Ah yes,
When i was 8 my mom bought me and my brother a lava lamp.
The next day, my cousins came over, and the one who isnt so smart decided she would pick it up and shake it, smearing the wax all over the sides of the lamp where it solidified, and never worked right again, while looking ugly too
Thanks alot, zemira.
Its been 17 years and i still remember.
There are some grudges that just aren't worth holding. This one is.
EDIT: I meant "this one IS worth holding". Didn't think about other ways it could be read. Betrayed yet again by my lack of foresight.
There are some grudges that just _are_ worth holding. This one is.
perfectly balanced
@@scaper8 you're saying the same thing as @DominateEye
@@TrigonFilms I see that now. Unfortunately they had not amended their comment when I had made mine and I thought that they meant the opposite of their intended meaning. My comment was a joke stating my opposition to what I thought they meant.
I really appreciate that you put in actual subtitles. It is very considerate for those that need them, and while I don't, I do really like them.
Whoa guy. That “be patient Greg” just blew my mind mid watch 🤯 lol
I love this channel so much
All the effort that goes in to researching, writing, and getting the perfect take recorded doesn’t go unnoticed
YOU'RE TOO GOOD!
Shout out to South Main Auto Repair for that noise when you whipped out the break cleaner.
Absolutely hilarious
South Main Auto FTW
I was wondering if anyone knew what that part was from 👍 great channel here on youtube.
@@Will_RM He is a really great mechanic, and overall just a great person. It took me a second to register what had happened, but I played it back and it was perfect.
@@Mqxwell Yeah he definitely is, he makes his videos fun to watch and you learn things at the same time. Also love seeing Mrs, O too. Overall great family and a very respected mechanic, something hard to find today.
hahah my wife was in the room when I was watching this yesterday, and right there at 9:45 I pointed and shouted HEY! South Main Auto!! She thought I was weird lol.
"This lamp's goop has been replaced with my very own." ಠ︵ಠ
"God that's hot."
Ohh myyyy...
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Probably after touching that hot bottom
As long as it's not Gwyneth's 😱
I’m pretty sure this was the first video that opened up this channel’s world to me and I’m forever grateful
OMG he actually did something about the lava lamp! He could talk about paint dry and I'd still listen for hours.
Well NOW I'm curious how paint dries.
Oil paint is actually pretty interesting, especially pigments
@@wmhilton-old Not all paints dry the same. Some paints cure instead of drying, and some oil paints take decades to 'dry'.
Latex paints can form a single molecule once dried on a surface!
@@sigmasquadleader Whaaaat? That's amazing!
"I'm not gonna be using it [Brake Parts Cleaner] for its intended purpose..." I think you have just described the majority of times brake parts cleaner is used! And the Orchestra when you pulled the can out made me doublecheck if I was on the right channel!
I think I'm beginning to understand how Ray wound up in my recs in the first place now... SMH
I really like that you talk about how problematic the use and disposal of that chemical is and act accordingly. Even if the amount of chemical is small, it's the right mindset. 👍
fuck the environment lmao
Ummmm... 7:14 "this lamp's goop has been replaced with my very own"
And as you can see it's working quite well.
Ah yes, the Horrific Realisation lamp
Technology Connections: “This stuff has been banned in several states because of serious environmental and health risks.”
Me: *looks nervously at the 55 gallon drum of brake cleaner that I use every day at work*
Thinks back to all the times I used it on warm engine components up until the fumes forced me to move away because my eyes were burning
boss-at-machine-shop-in-the-80s: “Here, once you’ve strapped those parts on a pallette, use this stuff in this drum to degrease and clean them."
me-new-hire-at-machine-shop: “Whoa, this stuff is pretty woozy making”
boss-at-machine-shop: “Yeah, that 2-2-4 trichloroethylene is pretty strong stuff. Hmm. Maybe you should do that outside, dummy.”
me-deciding-im-quitting-soon: “Yeah. Good tip. "
@The Walrus well it can be used in a pinch as a replacement for chloroform.... as a solvent... jeeze.... internet has a dirty mind!
Brake cleaner is wild. I got a decent amount on my hand and it was numb for a few days.
Doesn’t new brake cleaner use plain acetone not tetra(something)...?
I've always been fascinated by lava lamps, so this was really interesting. I'm surprised at how complicated they are. (Not the lamp itself, but the formula.) I wonder how the inventor ever came up with it.
science is a mix of insanity, strokes of genius, and messing around with dangerous substances
@@memethief4113 The scientific method is literally "f*ck around and find out"
@@memethief4113 in the case of lava lamps, the dangerous substances were more than likely LSD, shrooms, or other hallucinogens.
@@Eon2641 unless you're aspeaking to a flat earther, then the scientific method is somehow non scientific
I've always figured that it was discovered purely by accident. Perhaps they were melting candlewax in a double boiler, and the wax that spilled between the two pots started doing the lava thing?
The whole chemistry theorizing reminded me of a NileRed video. Would be fun to see a collab.
Lava lamp has always been a fascination and mystery to me, and your deep dive was awesome. I have my parent's original lava lamp, it is one of the first ones I think. It has this amazing starfield in the glass, the wax is an amazing lava deep red, and the base has holes in it to shine light on your walls. Ive never seen a better lava lamp in my life.
btw, I love the shirt. I need one.
To be fair, a lot of problems can be removed with a “pokey thing”
A lot of problems can be created with a "pokey thing" too...
Scene: The babies cry in the back ground. The shotgun wedding wife is screaming her head off threatening divorce, alimony and taking of the house and is providing proof of her poly relationship with a tax inspector and hypotheticals writer's best friend and boss
Including hokey things
Don’t forget to shake it all about!
@@ProctorsGamble
Your username.. it's.. beautiful.
What about a sucky thing? Gotta have one of those