Homemade Lava Lamp Experiment - Essay Example

The second step would be to fill the bottle to ¾ way full to leave an appropriate amount for the water.

Fill the remaining bottle space with water but leave a small gap between the water meniscus and the top of the bottle. (You can always add more water as the experiment continues).

Decide on a colour for the lava lamp and select the food colour appropriately. Subsequently, add 10 or more droplets of the selected food colouring to the mixture in the bottle until a rich colour is seen.

For the fifth step, add the baking soda in very small amounts while observing each reaction in the bottle.

When the observed bubbling stops, tightly replace the cork with the bottle.

Finally, shake the bottle back and forth while observing the reactions in the bottle. Tip, twist and shake it in different directions and take notes of the observations.

In understanding how the lava lamp works, the first step would be to understand that oil and water do not mix. They are insoluble. The main goal of the liquids used in the lava lamp is to obtain two liquids that have very close densities but are insoluble in each other and that is why oil and water are preferable (Cothron et. al, 4). Oil and water will not mix in the experiment as water is made up of highly charged compounds while oil is made up of long carbon chains that have no charge. As a result, the water molecules are not attracted to the oil molecules hence rendering the two liquids immiscible. The immiscibility of the two liquids causes the separation that will be seen in the experiment just as observed in our everyday life such as the kitchen sinks and oil spills. Further, the oil being less dense than water will float on top of the water as will be exemplified in the experiment. The baking soda used in the experiment contains sodium bicarbonate. Baking soda is technically both basic and acidic. When baking soda is mixed with water, a chemical reaction is formed that releases carbon dioxide gas (Heuer, 10). Carbon dioxide gas is produced in a bubbling manner which is seen in the coloured fluid that is in the bottle. Food colouring is used to merely add colour to the experiment. When added, the food colouring falls through the oil and mixes with the water at the bottom giving it the particular colour of choice that is to illuminate at the onset of the chemical reactions in the bottle.