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
@@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.
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.
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.
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.
@@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.
I don't think I've ever laughed so hard at a CZcams video when he jumps to the folding table and asks "did that cut work?" And then it jumps back again. Priceless.
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
After my extensive research of scrolling for 8 to 10 seconds, I didn't see what I thought would be the obvious answer to adding opaque color to the wax. Crayola crayons. I think they even sink in water. Imagine a brown rainbow of _Burnt Sienna, Fuzzy Wuzzy, Brown, Sepia, Raw Sienna,_ and _Beaver_ lava lamps placed on shelves of staggered height placed in your fireplace. That sounds amazing to me.
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.
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....
Some tips for making your own lava lamp: - The paraffin ist best, but can probably be substituted with any hydrogenated oil. - The only way to increase the density of the paraffin, there's no other way than adding super dense but also toxic halogenated organic compounds. So i would rather try to decrease the waters density by adding ethanol. As long as you stay under 50 % ethanol it won't be flammable.
Interesting... Im about to embark upon a journey into the unknown on a new style of lava lamp, and the thought of making the fluid less dense is interesting. The wax wouldnt soak up the ethanol?
Where has this channel been my whole life? Love this stuff. I never had an actual lava lamp myself, but I had a lamp filled with some kind of shinly sparkling paper stuff. It's ready to go in minutes, no hours of waiting. It's really pretty too! Loving it so much.
You are the first US CZcamsr that I see makes some experiments, and educates people about how to handle, and disposal enviromental dangerous chemicals, and that's nice Sr. Very interesting the explanations, thanks for everything.
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 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.
This video was delightful! Thanks for going through the various lessons and observations made over the course of the process. The whole piece has a unique calm-chaotic energy to it. Loved it.
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.
The aside about tetrachloroethylene was surreal, I kinda live what you described. My city is a superfund site because of a groundwater plume of dry cleaning waste under the pumps for city water. It's such a common solvent that I guess the mention here isn't too shocking, though I'm really happy to hear it's being phased out lol. I learned a lot more about the characteristics of PCE from a lava lamp video than from 4 different EPA presentations!!
Maaan! The linguistics, the precision, the details, the order of delivery and so much more that escapes my immediate vocabulary! I'm fascinated by you man! And I truly admire the enormous amount of effort that's even though so subtly presented yet impossible to go unnoticed, evidently by how you can make such a trivial matter as lava lamps sounds as interesting as several iconic technologies you had spoke about in your channel; and with so little informations! I don't write this because I simply enjoy your content, I write it because I somehow find your method extremely satisfying, even though English isn't my first language nor have I extensively studied linguistics or lived in an English-speaking dominated country, yet I still find your professionalism and precision phenomenal and I thank you and admire you for it. I hope CZcams are paying you enough haha I hope this comment reaches you Much love and keep it up! ❤️ 👍🐐
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.
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.
I wonder if you ever figured out a good solution to your color problems. My immediate thought is either mica, or oil soluable pigments used in soap. The former is probably better though, mica is very light weight and google says it works in wax okay if you do not need to burn anything. I'm not sure it would stay in the wax and not eventually leak into the water though. Anyway I have never owned a lava lamp! And i didn't know that there is a whole thing where they get warmed up and slowly start to take shape. I have liked them and thought about wanting one since i was a tiny baby but never quite seen the PERFECT LAVA LAMP that i wanted and now i think maybe I'll settle for going to buy what seems like a reasonably neat one off amazon.
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).
The working wine bottle looks amazing, I personally don't like the huge globs on some lamps, I like the many small globs one, and having a taller bottle seems to help with it. I've had mine for about 20 years now, it tends to have at least 1 big blob at all times with a few smaller ones, and mine didn't come with a bottle cap, which explains why the water level is lower, though not sure why it looks like some burnt pieces are in there now.
This was fun, and I'm happy you talked about how to dispose of the contaminated parafin. Maybe you could make a weird candle of it and slowly burn it to accelerate the process? Strictly outside though.
I recently got a lava lamp, so decided to rewatch this video. My girlfriend is now next to me, laughing uncontrollably, non stop, over your magma lamp joke. I had to pause the video. She's still laughing. Help. It's been like a whole minute.
These videos are just awesome. Very well produced, interesting, and at the same time very calming. I had a short period of sleeplessness not long ago, and this channel was about the only thing that helped me fall asleep.
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.”
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.
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
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)
@@Kycilak It also expands when frozen. It's the reason why water floats and makes many natural processes possible. I remember my chemistry teacher was disappointed I missed such a simple yet crucial fact in a presentation I had to do on the properties of water.
@@Senzorei imagine lakes if ice didn't float … the water would freeze at the surface and sink and build up until the lake was solid n everything dies … every year.
Ohhh, this video actually solved a question I had as a kid. We had a lava lamp nightlight, but I noticed that one of the blobs had a strange, circular piece of wire in it and ruining the aesthetic. and also the thing didn't really work that well. This video made me realize that they didn't fasten the dang coil to the bottom. Thanks tech connections!
Okay, huh...it's not fixed in place, but I don't think I've ever seen the coil just...floating around in its own little chunk like that in real lamps. Now I'm still confused. Maybe because the globe was far too small or...something?
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! 🛠️
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. 🙂
Damn. I was hoping those lava-lamps were a bit simpler than that. Oh well, thanks for the explanation. And even more thanks for not sweeping the fiddly bits onto the cutting-room floor -- that stuff is educational (and interesting) in itself.
I just subscribed to you!!!!!!! Your nerdiness makes me incredibly happy for some reason and your concern for the effect disposing that stuff on the planet pushed it over the limit... i HAD to SUBSCRIBE!!!🌹🌈🦋
Brake cleaner is a great solvent, in the automotive industry we use it to clean pretty much anything when working with bare metal or even just to look for imperfections when smoothing out bodywork (the shine will show you where any dents are and there’s no water to rust your clean surface)
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 love this guy, somehow his voice like, i stantly calms me down, and he teaches in a way that makes sense. Whenever im having a bad day with paranoia or anxiety, i turn on one of his videos and bam, I'm feeling alright again! Hell yeah 🎉
I hope there's an update for this video, it's one of my favorites! A lot of soap crafting suppliers have raw pigment dyes that I think will be great for dying the wax.
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.
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.
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.
"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."
My dad, a mechanic, has recently bought one of those dispensers for disinfectant and filled it up with Break Cleaner. Works great for him and my mum is happy that we don't have oil everywhere anymore
Outstanding!! I've been a subscriber for years and love your videos.... this one really appealed to me and piqued my interest as I greatly enjoyed hearing you go through the trial and error.... I know its not an instructional video and you recommend not doing this...but it would be awesome to make projects following your instruction.... you are like the Bob Ross of technology!
my dad gave me his old lava lamp from back when he was in college in the 80s. it still works perfectly! all it needed was a new bulb, and it heats up/ starts working pretty quickly compared to other lava lamps
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.
Dude HOW are you able to make such comprehensive videos? They are SO good. Well. Done. A+ on all measures. I want to make a one time donation, is this possible?
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.
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!
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 😅
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💀
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.
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?
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... 😊🇨🇦
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.
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
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.
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.
I don't think I've ever laughed so hard at a CZcams video when he jumps to the folding table and asks "did that cut work?" And then it jumps back again. Priceless.
“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
"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
After my extensive research of scrolling for 8 to 10 seconds, I didn't see what I thought would be the obvious answer to adding opaque color to the wax. Crayola crayons. I think they even sink in water. Imagine a brown rainbow of _Burnt Sienna, Fuzzy Wuzzy, Brown, Sepia, Raw Sienna,_ and _Beaver_ lava lamps placed on shelves of staggered height placed in your fireplace. That sounds amazing to me.
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.
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
I always give my lava lamps a little taste test.
Shlorp the forbidden jelly!
OOOoOoOO DaNk MeMeS
@@jessepinkman1471 hyperlavalampemia.
@@sandman1576 BIG CHOONGOSE REDIT GOLD
How else would you know if its still a good lamp?
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.
Some tips for making your own lava lamp:
- The paraffin ist best, but can probably be substituted with any hydrogenated oil.
- The only way to increase the density of the paraffin, there's no other way than adding super dense but also toxic halogenated organic compounds. So i would rather try to decrease the waters density by adding ethanol. As long as you stay under 50 % ethanol it won't be flammable.
Interesting... Im about to embark upon a journey into the unknown on a new style of lava lamp, and the thought of making the fluid less dense is interesting. The wax wouldnt soak up the ethanol?
My crêpes flambé with 40% ethanol Cognac disagree with your statement that below 50% water ethanol mixtures aren't flammable.
Probably wise to avoid anything potentially flammable if one is just mucking around.
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: czcams.com/video/1q4dUt1yK0g/video.html
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.
Where has this channel been my whole life? Love this stuff. I never had an actual lava lamp myself, but I had a lamp filled with some kind of shinly sparkling paper stuff. It's ready to go in minutes, no hours of waiting. It's really pretty too! Loving it so much.
You are the first US CZcamsr that I see makes some experiments, and educates people about how to handle, and disposal enviromental dangerous chemicals, and that's nice Sr. Very interesting the explanations, thanks for everything.
*"Water does the opposite because it's cheeky."*
jfc man, your deadpan deliveries are amazing.
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?
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.
This video was delightful! Thanks for going through the various lessons and observations made over the course of the process.
The whole piece has a unique calm-chaotic energy to it. Loved it.
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
“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.
The aside about tetrachloroethylene was surreal, I kinda live what you described. My city is a superfund site because of a groundwater plume of dry cleaning waste under the pumps for city water. It's such a common solvent that I guess the mention here isn't too shocking, though I'm really happy to hear it's being phased out lol. I learned a lot more about the characteristics of PCE from a lava lamp video than from 4 different EPA presentations!!
Maaan! The linguistics, the precision, the details, the order of delivery and so much more that escapes my immediate vocabulary!
I'm fascinated by you man! And I truly admire the enormous amount of effort that's even though so subtly presented yet impossible to go unnoticed, evidently by how you can make such a trivial matter as lava lamps sounds as interesting as several iconic technologies you had spoke about in your channel; and with so little informations!
I don't write this because I simply enjoy your content, I write it because I somehow find your method extremely satisfying, even though English isn't my first language nor have I extensively studied linguistics or lived in an English-speaking dominated country, yet I still find your professionalism and precision phenomenal and I thank you and admire you for it.
I hope CZcams are paying you enough haha
I hope this comment reaches you
Much love and keep it up! ❤️ 👍🐐
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.
"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.
I wonder if you ever figured out a good solution to your color problems. My immediate thought is either mica, or oil soluable pigments used in soap. The former is probably better though, mica is very light weight and google says it works in wax okay if you do not need to burn anything. I'm not sure it would stay in the wax and not eventually leak into the water though.
Anyway I have never owned a lava lamp! And i didn't know that there is a whole thing where they get warmed up and slowly start to take shape. I have liked them and thought about wanting one since i was a tiny baby but never quite seen the PERFECT LAVA LAMP that i wanted and now i think maybe I'll settle for going to buy what seems like a reasonably neat one off amazon.
My wife, and I, enjoy watching your videos. Thank you, for all the hard work!
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.
"Lava lamps are useless."
Cloudflare's SSL lab: hold my beer
For the interested: Tom Scott - czcams.com/video/1cUUfMeOijg/video.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).
The working wine bottle looks amazing, I personally don't like the huge globs on some lamps, I like the many small globs one, and having a taller bottle seems to help with it. I've had mine for about 20 years now, it tends to have at least 1 big blob at all times with a few smaller ones, and mine didn't come with a bottle cap, which explains why the water level is lower, though not sure why it looks like some burnt pieces are in there now.
This was fun, and I'm happy you talked about how to dispose of the contaminated parafin. Maybe you could make a weird candle of it and slowly burn it to accelerate the process? Strictly outside though.
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.
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"?
I recently got a lava lamp, so decided to rewatch this video. My girlfriend is now next to me, laughing uncontrollably, non stop, over your magma lamp joke. I had to pause the video. She's still laughing. Help. It's been like a whole minute.
Has she stopped yet?
@@MaydupNem I sure hope so!
he's the only guy that can make me listen to the most boring stuff for almost half an hour and make me enjoy my time
"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)
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.
These videos are just awesome. Very well produced, interesting, and at the same time very calming. I had a short period of sleeplessness not long ago, and this channel was about the only thing that helped me fall asleep.
Love the way you look at the lava lamp at 19:30. Really brings home the hypnotic appeal of the lava lamp.
8:41 Totally missed an opportunity to call it "dark orange."
Orange with context!
Or brag about how he actually made a brown light
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
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.
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
"...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...
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)
Great video. Answered a couple issues I had making my own lava lamps.
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'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"
"water does the opposite, because it's cheeky"
I died
It holds just for temperatures between freezing and 4 °C. Any higher and water expands with temperature too.
But water is quite cheeky indeed.
@@Kycilak Water is a very weird substance indeed.
@@Kycilak It also expands when frozen. It's the reason why water floats and makes many natural processes possible. I remember my chemistry teacher was disappointed I missed such a simple yet crucial fact in a presentation I had to do on the properties of water.
@@Senzorei imagine lakes if ice didn't float … the water would freeze at the surface and sink and build up until the lake was solid n everything dies … every year.
@@jaewok5G This is the exact thing my chemistry teacher brought up as an example lol.
Ohhh, this video actually solved a question I had as a kid. We had a lava lamp nightlight, but I noticed that one of the blobs had a strange, circular piece of wire in it and ruining the aesthetic. and also the thing didn't really work that well.
This video made me realize that they didn't fasten the dang coil to the bottom. Thanks tech connections!
Okay, huh...it's not fixed in place, but I don't think I've ever seen the coil just...floating around in its own little chunk like that in real lamps. Now I'm still confused. Maybe because the globe was far too small or...something?
Thanks for explaining this so clearly! It’s clear you know how to clarify everything about lava lamps. Truly magmaficent!
Clearly!
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?
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. 🙂
14:09 you look so happy to get it going "Okay!"
Damn. I was hoping those lava-lamps were a bit simpler than that.
Oh well, thanks for the explanation.
And even more thanks for not sweeping the fiddly bits onto the cutting-room floor -- that stuff is educational (and interesting) in itself.
"water does the opposite because it's cheeky"
Idk why but that got me good
"No Effort November"
Goes through all the effort of creating a DIY Lava Lamp
I've always loved lava lamps BTW clear and black lava was always my favorite and your so right about the magma lol
I just subscribed to you!!!!!!! Your nerdiness makes me incredibly happy for some reason and your concern for the effect disposing that stuff on the planet pushed it over the limit... i HAD to SUBSCRIBE!!!🌹🌈🦋
"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 😱
When TC's "no effort" November beats other channels' high effort rest of the year
Brake cleaner is a great solvent, in the automotive industry we use it to clean pretty much anything when working with bare metal or even just to look for imperfections when smoothing out bodywork (the shine will show you where any dents are and there’s no water to rust your clean surface)
Whoa guy. That “be patient Greg” just blew my mind mid watch 🤯 lol
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.
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 love this guy, somehow his voice like, i stantly calms me down, and he teaches in a way that makes sense. Whenever im having a bad day with paranoia or anxiety, i turn on one of his videos and bam, I'm feeling alright again! Hell yeah 🎉
I hope there's an update for this video, it's one of my favorites! A lot of soap crafting suppliers have raw pigment dyes that I think will be great for dying the wax.
"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
"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
I really enjoy how you explain things, and the humour you add.
This, Sir, was an excellent video in style.
Thank you very much!
"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.
"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 CZcams Comment Section classroom
@@dreska255 Buoyain’t
Fun, frequent phenomenon found in flava flamps. I love this channel
Youve grown on me. I think ill subscribe. Your dry humor is something that cant be passed.
Bouyant and "sinkyant", amazing. Your sense of humor is finely tuned to my personality, I'm glad I've found your channel.
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
That Eric O moment just made my day. Great video (as always!)
I love how you did the South Main Auto sound effect when you whipped out the brakleen.
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."
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 really like this guy's sense of humor!
Keep up the good work!
My dad, a mechanic, has recently bought one of those dispensers for disinfectant and filled it up with Break Cleaner. Works great for him and my mum is happy that we don't have oil everywhere anymore
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..! =)
~♡
Outstanding!! I've been a subscriber for years and love your videos.... this one really appealed to me and piqued my interest as I greatly enjoyed hearing you go through the trial and error.... I know its not an instructional video and you recommend not doing this...but it would be awesome to make projects following your instruction.... you are like the Bob Ross of technology!
my dad gave me his old lava lamp from back when he was in college in the 80s. it still works perfectly! all it needed was a new bulb, and it heats up/ starts working pretty quickly compared to other lava lamps
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.
There's an art product called "encaustic." It's basically pigmented wax, I'd look into that.
Dude HOW are you able to make such comprehensive videos? They are SO good. Well. Done. A+ on all measures. I want to make a one time donation, is this possible?
TC you did it again, nabbed me with a fantastic hook while scrolling. How did you know I used to love these when I was 20 years old?