[Lissa]

Lissa asked the Naked Scientists:
   
I am doing your science experiments about the lava lamp, and our teacher ask us to write some questions for our experiments.

This is what i wrote.....

Does the temperature of the water affect the reaction?

What will happen if I put baking soda in the bottle instead of fizzing tablet?

What will happen if I put the vegetable oil in the bottle first then put the
water will it still work if I put the tablet?

Does the size of the bottle affect how many blobs are produced?

And our teacher said we have to write 10-20 questions, and i cant think of any more so can you please help think more? I would very appreciate A LOT!

So much Thanks

Lissa

What do you think?

[Chemistry4me]

I've just had a look at that and it's quite a little neat Kitchen Science.

Here are my dumb questions:

-Can I slow down the rate the bubbles appear?
-What if I put an acid into the water?
-Does the material of the bottle affect the blobs produced?
-What will happen if I heated/cooled the solution?
-What will happen if I used the same amount of water as oil?

See, I told you they were dumb. []

[daveshorts]

Can you affect the size of the globules which float up?
 Possibly the rate at which bubbles are produced might affect it.
 The density of the water - you could try adding salt to create brine.
 The size of the bubbles might affect this too.
 
Possibly temperature may have an effect as it affects the speed of chemical reactions.
Adding washing up liquid might have all sorts of strange affects, as it will cause the oil water and air to mix better...

the shape of the container may well affect how the liquids move, try tall thin ones, if you have access to them...