Lava lamps!

Some brands of kosher salt (like the box of Morton spotted in the video) use yellow prussiate of soda as an anti-caking agent. If you make a salt-brine for fermenting veggies, you'll notice that using these types of kosher salts can cause a white cloudiness to settle out at the bottom of the brine. You can find kosher salt brands that don't use any anti-caking agents (Diamond Crystal is one). Considering the small amount of salt that actually went into your lava lamp solution, this effect was probably negligible (especially compared to the effect of the bad Brakleen). Still, it might be something worth experimenting with in the future.

Josh Braun

Don't touch the bottom you fool! Laughed hard at that. Enjoyed the whole vid but that really got me.

Marc Grondin

Flarva Flamps.... Tut. .....SHAME! What's happened to you? You used to put effort in.... ;-P

Is there a place one would find a bit of bio on Alec? I'm curious as to his background.

Dumb question: did you look into candle making dyes?

Retro Game Club podcast retrogameclub.net

Contrary to the opinions of a certain closed captions author, I liked the hair and thought it was great for an occasional change-up.

Kevin Tessner

I love any research that starts by having to consume to content of bottles of wine.

Raphaël

Clever marketing from Cloudflare :-) https://youtu.be/1cUUfMeOijg

What is this? "Far too much effort" November?

Keith Boucher

Hey Alec. I'm a truck driver and I haul hazardous materials in a dump trailer. Coincidentally enough, sometimes it was the earth where a dry cleaner used to be. We would haul the material to Canada eh, where it was dumped outsider in rows and on occasion turned to expose new dirt. Your theory of evaporation is partially correct, the other key part is the UV breaking down the chemical so be sure to put it directly in the sun without a cover or inside a bottle. -Keeb

Jason Greene

The first thing that came to mind when you talked of adding a chlorinated solvent was good old brominated vegetable oil, which is a literal food ingredient. Whether it would work in a lamp I sure don't know, though. Chlorinated and brominated paraffin itself is a commercial product, as a fire retardant.

Michaela Pereckas

I used to dye paraffin waxes with "solvent dyes" when I worked on thermochromic stickers back in the day. They're often used for dyeing fuel. I'll warn that very few things actually dissolve well in paraffins and stay together after the mix goes through phase changes.

Jason Romine

Neat. I am guessing it's the propylene glycol that's being used to modify the density of the paraffin wax. Sodium chloride is obviously salt, for the saline solution, and the sodium sulphate is possibly doing the job of the soap liquid. Glydant seems to be a trade name preservative.

Chris Crowther

Thanks to you I'm powering up my lava lamp today, first time in months.

Alan B.

Hey, just wanted to thank you again for always putting the effort into the captions. Even though we can hear, they help my wife and I a lot!

‘Leigh

MSDS of a Lava Lamp: https://images.homedepot-static.com/catalog/pdfImages/6a/6a1c9605-6b02-4871-8bab-98bcddffffec.pdf

You had all of those warnings about the break chemicals, but then no warning at all about consuming multiple bottles of wine? Seems like you’re concerned about the dangers is a bit misplaced considering how many people are killed by those chemicals versus alcohol. Food for thought

Benjamin Kier

When do we see the bonus video of the consumption of the wine? 🙂

Jennifer Holz

I love lava lamps. We had one in my primary school junior block for reasons probably lost to time (part of me likes to imagine it was one of the nun's mommento from her pre-nun days).

Chris Crowther

I lava youra videos

Adam Wishneusky

Lovely video! Thank you!

JockeTF

Informative and entertaining, thanks. Some artists prefer to use a more environmentally friendly "thinning" medium with oil paints. One such is Zest-It. There are others. Maybe worth a try? https://www.jacksonsart.com/zest-it-oil-paint-dilutant-and-brush-cleaner-500ml

Peter Bryenton

OCD, the 4th lamp has a small dent on the front of the lower base. Great video, I looked into the whole DIY lava lamp many (20) years ago, met with initial success, I soon had what resembled orange milk.

Anton

I suspect everyone in Alec's family is getting a lava lamp for the holidays.

Have you tried melting a crayon into the wax for color?

David Larsen

I like it. A reverse lava lamp, where the light comes from the top.

adcurtin

I've never experienced anything like this, no, and truthfully I can't think of a cause. The glass could break due to thermal shock I suppose but it's pretty unlikely since it heats so slowly. Unless the contents of the lamp were very different from the general wax/water combo, there really shouldn't be a way for them to violently explode. Unless they somehow got hot enough for the water to boil but there's no way that would happen with just a light bulb.

Technology Connections

You put way, wa-a-a-a-ay too much effort into this. But you made a great video from it, which is what's important. This video reminded me of NileRed's videos.

Stephen Gillie

Don't touch the bottom!!!! :D

Jason Wellband

Great video man, I used to love Lava Lamps as a kid.. That love was extinguished by multiple lamps exploding, sadly.. and not even due to entertaining shenanigans like heating it on the stove top or putting an a much bigger bulb than needed under it. Two completely up and shattered, and one blew its top like Vesuvius.. Have you ever experienced anything like this? if so do you have any idea as to what could cause it?

Honorary Octopus

Can I just say that the writing in this video is really top notch. Your pacing and humor is fantastic, some of the best I've ever seen from Alec!

Justin Tokke

Serious Breaking Bad territory here...

Jason Thorpe

I <3 this video and topic! @Michael Dunn already mentioned, but Cloudflare has used images of lava lamps in operation to increase entropy for seeding encryption algorithms. So perhaps this is worth a mention in the video rather than leaving it at "objectively pointless objects"! https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/ssl/lava-lamp-encryption/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/lavarand-in-production-the-nitty-gritty-technical-details/

toasterking

So it'd be possible to make a lava bit with just a heater and then light it separately however you want? Interesting to think about. 🤔

Guilty as charged

Technology Connections

This is super-cool! I've always been fascinated with lava lamps. Now I know why they wear out (evaporation) and why they're fiddly to make. Thanks!

Craig P Steffen

What you want to look for are fat soluble dyes / hydrophobic dyes. (I am a chemist BTW). If I have some free time, I'll try to give you some specific examples. And I'll try to look into what's in lava lamp wax

Retro Game Club podcast retrogameclub.net

The little ones have just a 15W bulb, for what it's worth!

Technology Connections

I always liked the fact that lava lamps are used as a source of entropy for important random-number generators.

Michael Dunn

If anyone is interested in remaking their lava lamp: http://oozinggoo.ning.com/page/goo-kits I have remade many and lots of fun. Make sure you get a dimmer switch.

Chris Brosz

You could try mica pigments. a lot of them have a metallic shine to them. They are quite dense, but come in very fine powder (somtimes in handfull-micron particle size). So they might actually suspend in the wax

SkaveRat

Not all lamps commercial lamps are that shape, but I think the reason why it's most common is that it is works under a wider range of temperature and also just... better. Narrowing towards the top would, I imagine, cause that region to cool faster and keep the temperature gradient more pronounced. And having it pinch back at the bottom seems to be helpful in getting the globs to slam into the coil

Technology Connections

You sure do love a lamp.

Per Hedetun

I wonder if the tapered shape of the bottles has anything to do with how these things work. Seeing how your straight-sided wine bottles seemed to work just as well as the tapered lava lamps suggests that the shape doesn't matter. But since all the classic lava lamps have the same general shape, there must be a reason for it.

Mark Hesse

Awesome video! Seems your only real problem is not having access to more chemically pure materials. Hopefully you will attract the attention of a passing chemist!

John Laur

Lava lamps that run with sub 10W heat sources would be neat.

Well, at one point it was. A sangria of a sort.

Technology Connections

Too bad the brown and blue jigglies failed. 😢

tim1724

They always say you shouldn't shake them, so I'm kind of disappointed that there was no shaking action here!

Felix Freiberger

Some nice experimentation, I like it! Unfortunately I cannot help any further, my chemical knowledge is not so deep...

MrHammond

“Did this cut work?” Yes, but we’re going to ignore that.

Sean Hearrell

Is that Ed Hardy wine?

I've got a larger one that never even works. I let it run for upwards of 8 hours and it never starts lava-ing.

Emily Elam

Lava lamps are mostly filled with paraffin wax, water, and chemicals

Gadgetman

Lava lamps are amazing. I wish I could find a retro red one

Braxen