Lava is almost too hot to believe — it can reach 1,600 degrees Fahrenheit — so if you ever come across real magma spewing out of a mountain, we’d recommend staying far away.
This lava, however, is just made of stuff that might be in your kitchen. These directions are adapted from education.com — which has lots more information about the science behind how this works.
To make your own lava, to keep in your own lava lamp, here’s what you’ll need:
• 1 plastic bottle with a cap
• Enough vegetable oil to fill your bottle ¾ full
• 1 Alka-Seltzer tablet
• Food coloring
• Water
How to make lava
1. Rinse or wash your plastic bottle, and then fill it ¾ full with vegetable oil. Oil can make a mess, so we did this on top of some old newspapers.
2. Fill the rest of your bottle — leaving a little space at the top — with water. Oil and water don’t mix, and you should see how the liquids stay separated from each other.
3. Grab your food coloring and add 10 or more drops. You can use any color you want, but we used red to make it look extra lava-like.
4. Smash your Alka-Seltzer tablets and add the pieces, one at a time, to your bottle. Observe what starts to happen. Our tablets dropped to the bottom, then started bubbling and forcing round droplets of water up through the oil.
5. Once your tablet pieces stop fizzing, put the cap back on the bottle, tightly. Now you can turn and flip your brand-new lava lamp and watch it bubble and change.
