Week 1
Making our own lava lamps!
This week in Science club, we had SO much fun making our own lava lamps.
We used, water, food colouring, oil and alka-seltzer tablets! The children had so much fun making these. See the pictures and videos below!
What is the science behind homemade lava lamps?
The water and oil do not mix and the oil doesn’t change color because the food coloring is water soluble. The Alka-Seltzer reacts with the water to make bubbles of carbon dioxide. The bubbles attach themselves to the blobs of colored water and bring them to the top of the glass. When the bubbles pop the blobs of colored water fall back to the bottom of the glass.
How did we take our learning further?
After this experiment, we then tried to make another lava lamp, but this time without using water and without using an Alker-Seltzer. Instead, we used vinegar and bicarbonate of soda!
We found that it does work, but we much preferred the way we did it the first time!!!