Turn Bottle Candy Into Homemade Lava Lamps With This Cool Experiment

Have you ever looked at lava lamps and wondered how they work? TikToker Davey decided to do an experiment to see if you could make your own lava lamp using common household items. His experiment centered around the hashtag #experiment and involved using wax from bottle candy to create a DIY lava lamp fluid.

The Materials

For this project, Davey used bottle candies, a glass bottle or jar, ferrofluid, and warm water. Bottle candies are those cylindrical wax candies that are often filled with fruit flavors. They contain a colored wax inside that can be melted down. Ferrofluid is a liquid that contains magnetic nanoparticles, allowing it to move when exposed to a magnet.

Melting the Wax

The first step was to empty the wax out of the bottle candies. Davey then melted the wax in a container over heat until it became a liquid. This allowed him to pour the wax into the glass bottle. Next, he added a few drops of ferrofluid to the melted wax mixture before filling the rest of the bottle with warm water.

Adding the Magnet

With the bottle now filled, Davey let it sit for an hour to allow the wax and ferrofluid to separate layers. He then tested it out with a magnet, causing the ferrofluid to move and "flow" like lava. While it didn't work perfectly, it demonstrated how bottle candy wax can be reused to create a homemade lava lamp.

FAQs

How do regular lava lamps work?

Commercial lava lamps contain wax inside a glass container filled with water and oil. A light bulb heats the wax, causing it to rise and fall and move around when exposed to a magnet at the lamp's base.

What is ferrofluid and how does it help?

Ferrofluid is a liquid containing magnetic nanoparticles. When a magnet is near it, the nanoparticles align and allow the ferrofluid to flow in dynamic, lava-like patterns.

Can you substitute anything for the bottle candy wax?

Potential substitutes for the wax include paraffin wax or soy wax, which have similar melting points to the bottle candy wax and would produce similar results.

What other materials could you experiment with?

You could try different color dyes, glitter, or essential oils added to the wax and ferrofluid layers to create unique lighting and movement effects within the homemade lava lamp.