I’ve never had a lava lamp, but did think they were cool. So, when flipping through the books and looking for ideas for a family craft or science experiment, I got really excited when I found one that turned oil and water into a lava lamp.
An Alka Seltzer Lava Lamp!
Will it work?
The science behind this is fairly basic.
The way that the H2O forms water makes it slightly polarized, meaning there is one positive side and one negative side. However, oil is not polarized. This difference means that water and oil will never truly mix. You can shake the jar all you want and get a collage of teensy bubbles, but they will eventually separate again.
With this experiment, the water ends up on the bottom of the bottle with the oil on the upper level. This is important to know for later.
Alka Seltzer, which is made of
The gas rises, bringing some water along for the ride. Once at the top of the oil, the gas keeps leaving and the water becomes heavier than the oil again and sinks back down.
SO!
Does it work?
What you will need:
- water
- vegetable oil
- food coloring
- an empty bottle (though a glass might work as well – I can’t say for sure because I haven’t tried it, but I don’t see why it wouldn’t work. The plastic bottle is convenient because you can throw it away when done.)
- 1 Alka Seltzer tablet
Directions:
Carefully pour equal amounts of water and oil into the bottle. Add six drops of food coloring. This is cool because the food coloring drops go right through the oil without mixing, but blend in once they’re in the water.
We used twelve drops and tried to make purple, but twelve was too many and we ended up with a water that looked black. So, I recommend six.
Break the Alka Seltzer tablet into large pieces if need be to fit through the bottle’s top. Drop them in and watch the bubbly.
Okay, it was more like Alka Seltzer fizzies, but still really cool.