Lava Lamp

Derek has been bored out of his mind with the cast on his leg...for the past FIVE weeks. We have done some cool stuff to try to help him keep his mind off of it. I hardly post anything cool on my blog anymore. I usually just end up putting my photos of projects out on facebook with no story or point of reference. But I think I am going to try updating my blog and try to make it look like our lives are interesting....

We used a glass vase, and added enough vegetable oil to fill it almost half-way.

Then we added about the same amount of water. It was cool to add the water second, because the oil came right up to the top, and we talked about the whole density thing.

Then just drop in a little food coloring. We used all the colors...I would'nt do that again. It just made the lava lamp look brown. I think I would just stick with 2 primary colors next time. Ahhh Alka-Seltzer. What every science labratory needs. The many things you can do with Alka-Seltzer....

The Lava bubbles up quite nicely, and the colors swirl. It is very exciting. Derek also came up with the brilliant idea to add some diffrent types of liquid to the lamp. We put in some milk, orange juice, and vanilla. I was really hopeing to see some other types of seperation, like maybe the orange juice would all sink because of the sugar, or the fat in the milk would seperate and end up in the middle.

The orange juice didn't do anything, but there was a little fat from the milk that came to the top. And the vanilla just made it a little darker brown. But its all about the experience. And it got Derek to stop thinking about the cast for awhile. 10 more days. Just 10 more days.