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Lava lamps have always been used as a means of decor 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 lamp 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 with confetti instead of wax blobs which is the major difference between these lamps and others. But Glitter lamps hold a major advantage over lava lamps. They take 30 minutes to start instead of hours in case of others.

They operate in a curious yet interesting way. An incandescent bulb or a halogen bulb warms a glass chamber in which water is encased mixed with a mixture of translucent or opaque wax and carbon tetrachloride. There are various proportions but this is the most suitable and economical one. The density of wax is relatively higher than room temperature and it decreases when it is warmed and it eventually melts into a liquid and travels to the surface of the lamp in the shape of blobs. But after some time the blobs can cool and come down.

A 25 to 40 watts bulb is being used normally. It takes wax to approximately three hours to melt and form into blobs. When lamp actually starts working, we need to make sure there’s no abrupt movement. Any sudden jerk may lead to emulsifying of two liquids, which means unclear and unclouded blobs. As soon as the lamp starts working continuously, always be careful that no one shakes the lamp as the liquids can emulsify and this would produce unclear and cloudy blobs. To correct this, we need to take the lava lamp and leave it alone for some time.

The Singapore-born Englishman Edward Craven-Walker in the’60s invented the lava lamps. He opened a firm called Crest Worth at Poole, Dorset, UK. The lamps were really successful in the’60s and the early’70s.

In the late seventies Spector sold Lava Simplex International to Eddie Sheldon and Larry Haggerty of Haggerty Enterprises. Haggerty Enterprises continues to produce and sell the Lava Lamp in the US, using the name of Lava-world. “Lava lamp” has been used as a generic term but Lava-world has claimed violation of trademarks. Lava-world has closed production in the USA and outsourced their lamps to China. In the’90s, Craven-Walker, who had the rights to England and Western Europe, sold his rights to Cressida Granger whose company, Mathmos, continues to make Lava Lamps and related products. Mathmos lamps are still made in the original factory in Poole.

Philip Quinn, a 24-year old youth residing in Kent, Washington died during an experiment in which he heated a lava lamp on his kitchen stove, observing it from a few feet away. The heat produced from the stove was enough to build up sufficient pressure to make the lamp explode, spraying glass shards everywhere, one of which were sharp and big enough to pierce his heart owing to which he received his death.

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