The concept behind the lava lamp is fairly simple: Take two materials that don’t mix, and put them together. In this case, it’s basically wax and water. When the wax is heated by the lightbulb in the bottom of the lamp, it goes from being denser than the water — thus sinking to the bottom — to becoming the lighter of the two materials, thereby starting to float. When the wax reaches the top of the lamp (the point furthest from the heat source), it cools — and so becomes heavier again and sinks. The whole heating and cooling then repeats over and over, in all its ’60-style glory. As we mentioned, there are two components in the lava lamp: a wax compound and a liquid compound. The wax — the “lava” — is said to be a blend of paraffin and perchloroethylene (PERC, aka dry cleaning fluid or brake part cleaner). The liquid part is a mixture of distilled water, pure salt, antifreeze (ethylene glycol) and a coloring agent. The two different blends are then are sealed inside a heat-resistant glass container, which is then placed upon the heat/light source (usually a 40-watt light bulb).

The exact ratios of all the components in both the water and wax elements need to be carefully calibrated to align their specific gravities to make the lava lamp work as expected (and to not have the wax break up into little blobs or just hang in place). have done a pretty good job of figuring it out. In fact, if you have the patience, the materials and the equipment, they will even tell you exactly how you can create your own lava lamp. The lava lamp — under the name Lava Lite — was introduced to the US in 1965. While the initial marketing didn’t play up the groovy angle, it wasn’t long before the light with the colorful, undulating glow caught on with the younger generation. By 1967, the Lava Lite was being promoted with hyperbolic copy that included lines like “like wild – way out!” and “Eerie, ghostly color plus scintillating, sinuous motion… ever-changing – ever-different – never predictable.” As you can probably tell from the ingredients, the components of a lava lamp — whether self-made or bought — are quite toxic.

So we’ll come right out and say it: Do not drink the contents of your lava lamp. If you want to try making a non-toxic variant of a lava lamp using materials you probably have at home, get an easy homemade lava lamp how-to here. And if you’re looking to go the really simple route, you can just download the any one of several lava lamp apps for your smartphone.Buy Laptop From Aliexpress >> Check out our books! Blue Pitbull Mix Puppies For SaleVintage wedding look book, Pregnancy calendar & Mandalas coloring bookAppliance Repair Technician Resume (Click image to enlarge) This item is available for giftwrap! Human Powered Light Bulb, turn a static charge into light Harmless Static Electricity demonstration

Turns a static charge into light Sure you‘ve seen static electricity at work: “static cling”, bad hair days, a shock from a door knob - but now you can put all of that “body electricity” to good use and light a small neon light bulb. Body static electricity can be in excess of 10,000 volts - but amperage is so low, it’s harmless! Hold on to one of the light bulb wires and walk across your carpet, dragging your feet as you go.. This builds up a charge of static electricity that discharges through the light bulb in your hand. You power the bulb! Try it in a darkened room to see the full glow. You need to generate static electricity (think enough to get a small shock when you touch something metal.) That is how the bulb works. If you generate a large enough charge, the bulb glows in free air. The winter is usually when your house is closed up and air has less humidity, so that is when the bulb is most effective. You can also place the un-held bulb wire next to the human-powered light bulb, BUT NOT TOUCHING a metal object like a lamp or TV.

This allows the static electricity from the device to discharge from your body through the bulb. Electricity has never been more fun! Ages 7 and up Van de Graaff Generator DIY Kit The Famous Drinking Bird (2 pack)Rube Goldberg Contest - Rube Goldberg Machine Zach Umperovitch (in hat) adjusts the PSPE/SHPE machine at the local Rube Goldberg competition Saturday at Purdue. The team won the competition and will compete in the national contest March 31. Also pictured are team members David Cannon (left), Alex Weaver (top) and Adam Bahrainwala. (Purdue University photo/Andrew Hancock) What is the competition? Inspired by cartoonist Rube Goldberg, college students nationwide compete to design a machine that uses the most complex process to complete a simple task - put a stamp on an envelope, screw in a light bulb, make a cup of coffee - in 20 or more steps. The competition is sponsored by the Purdue University campus chapter of Theta Tau, a professional engineering fraternity.

What is the 2014 task? To be announced at a later date. When were the 2013 contests? The regional contest was held on Feb. 23, 2013. The national contest was held on Mar. 30 at noon in Columbus, Ohio at the Center of Industry and Science. How did the contest gain national prominence? The contest began as a rivalry between two Purdue engineering fraternities and was popular at Purdue in the 1940s and 1950s. It was revived in 1983. Since then, winners have appeared on "Jimmy Kimmel Live," "Newton's Apple," "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson," "Late Night With David Letterman," NBC's "Today," CBS's "This Morning," CBS News, "Beyond 2000," CNN and ABC's "Good Morning America." Rube Goldberg Machine Contest Contest at Purdue History of Rube Goldberg Rube Goldberg Inc. Rube Machine Contest site Past Contest WinnersDespite plenty of technical advances, incandescent lightbulbs still rule when it comes to color and quality of light. The trouble is, they don’t always last so long, and they waste almost all of their energy, emitting it as heat.

But what if you could have the color of incandescents, with the efficiency of an LED? That’s the promise of new research out of MIT. The new bulb works by arraying nano-mirrors around a regular incandescent element, reflecting the wasted heat back into the element. This brings incandescents into the efficiency range of LED and fluorescent bulbs. Incandescent bulbs look so good because they emit all colors of light, whereas LEDs and other more efficient light sources only manage a subset of all the colors of visible light. If you look at the color-range emitted by some energy-saving bulbs, chinks of the spectrum are missing. Our eye adjusts, but like digitized music compared to tape or vinyl, the brain may still subconsciously notice those gaps. This "full-spectrum" light also means incandescents are better than anything else at rendering colored objects faithfully. They’re like tiny little suns, only yellower (although the yellow tint has nothing to do with the "full-spectrum" aspect).

Published this week in Nature, the paper details the method. The bulb’s element is surrounded by a "cold-side nano-photonic interference system," essentially a mirror which lets visible light pass but reflects infrared heat. This heat is then reabsorbed by the element, causing it to emit more light. It’s a clever trick, and in principle very simple. To make the lamp, the tungsten element itself was modified too—the MIT bulb uses a ribbon instead of a strand, which is better for soaking up that reflected heat. The experiment, carried out by physicists Ognjen Ilic, Marin Soljačić, and John Joannopoulos, managed to triple the efficiency of an incandescent bulb to 6.6%. The team thinks it could refine the setup to reach 40% efficiency, which is at the upper limit possible for any light source. An LED maxes out at 15% efficiency. If the process of layering up the nano-mirrors can itself be made efficient enough for cheap manufacture, we could be back in business. You will be able to relax in your home, listening to your analog vinyl records and enjoying the prints made from your film camera in the full-spectrum, perfectly color-rendered light of an incandescent bulb, all without destroying the planet.