Let me introduce to you a fantastic and easy variation of the Lava Lamp Experiment. It needs only 4 ingredients that you would likely have at home right now (or just 3 if you don’t have any food colouring!). We added a cool light underneath our potion to make it a Light Up Lava Lamp – with great effect. Read on to see how we did it, watch the video too.

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Light-Up Lightning Lava Lamp

 

Materials

• A medium sized glass or plastic container
• Cooking oil (any kind)
• Baking soda (also known as Bicarbonate of soda or Sodium bicarbonate)
• Clear vinegar
• Red food colouring (optional or use another colour)
• Coaster light – these aren’t cheap (about £2) and this is optional, instead you could use your phone light underneath.

The coaster light kit looks like this:

 

 

Method

1. Into the container I put 2 heaped dessert spoons of baking soda, then poured in the oil, to about 2/3rds up, making sure to leave a room for vinegar.
2. I dyed the clear vinegar red with some food colouring, and then poured it in, almost to the top, and left the lid off!
3. Very quickly the bubble started to appear, and rose up through the oil.
4. I turned on the coaster light that we’d bought for a light-up effect, it looked so cool. It was like bubbling lava erupting from a volcano during a lightning storm!

 

Try this activity at night with the room’s main light switch off – soooo effective, really fun!

 

 

The science bit!

Baking soda is Sodium Bicarbonate (NaHCO3) and is a  alkali. It reacts with vinegar (acetic acid – an acid) to produce the gas is carbon dioxide (CO2), which bubbles upwards through the oil. The substance left behind – a white gloopy substance – is called sodium acetate and water:

sodium bicarbonate + acetic acid ——–> carbon dioxide + sodium acetate + water

As these 2 products build up (sodium acetate and water) the reaction slows down and, so to repeat it you’ll need to add more baking soda and vinegar.

 

Had as much fun as we did? Then feel free to share your pictures with us on Facebook.

 

Want more easy fun science recipes?

Check out our other How To blogs here:

Make Fluorescent glowing goo from a yellow highlighter pen

or
Gummy Bear Osmosis

or
Our fave, easy experiments to try

 

Good luck and have a happy science-ing.

If you tackle this activity at home you do so at your own risk. If you have as much fun as we did, feel free to share your pictures with us on Facebook.
Bye for now
Ruth

Chief Scientist at Devon Science