Lava Lamps - Increase the Beauty of Your Room!


Lava lamps have always been used as a means of décor instead of illumination. Anyone with the mesmerizing effect of the lamp knows how much it can relax them. The enchanting effect is uncanny. The name lava lamps has been based on the movement of blobs. The wax blob in a lamp gives it the name “Lava lamp”. They are readily available in various shades and colors. Moreover, wax can be of different colors.


Glitter lamps work on the same principle but with confetti instead of wax. This is counted as the major difference between them. But still, glitter lamps have an advantage which makes them preferable to some people. And that is, it just takes 30 minutes to start as compared to the other ones. 


The process by which the lava lamps works is that it has a standard incandescent bulb or halogen lamp that warms a glass chamber in which water is contained along with a transparent or unclear mix of wax and carbon tetrachloride. The combinations are several but this is the most popular one. The density of wax is slightly higher than water at room temperature but it decreases at higher temperatures. At higher temperatures, wax transmutes into liquid and it’s comes to the surface in the shape of blobs. These blobs eventually lose their heat and come down. A wire placed at the bottom of the chamber is used as a tension breaker to mix the cooled wax after they come down.


Generally a bulb of 25 to 40 watts is used. The wax takes about three hours to melt and forms in to blobs. As soon as the lamp starts working continuously, be cautious that anyone doesn’t shake or drop the lamp. That’s because liquids can emulsify and this would produce unclear and cloudy blobs. If this occurs, lamp will be needed to be left alone for a few hours until the wax settles down.


The inventor is the Singapore-born Englishman Edward Craven-Walker in the 1960s. He started a company called Crest worth which was located in Poole, Dorset, UK. The lamps gained enormous popularity in the 1960s and 70s and were a great success for many decades.


Specter made the deal to sign over Lava Simplex International to Eddie Sheldon and Haggerty of Haggerty Enterprises. In the late seventies Specter sold Lava Simplex International to Eddie Sheldon and Larry Haggerty of Haggerty Enterprises. They kept on assembling and vending Lava lamps under the name of Lava world. However, Lava world has been non-operational in the US for some time.


A youth from Kent, Washington, Philip Quinn, 24 died in an experiment in which he was trying to heat a lava lamp on a kitchen stove to see what would happen. He observed it from a few feet away. The heat made the pressure so intense that the lamp exploded and a single shard was sharp enough to pierce the heart, and caused his death eventually.