Lava lamps are primarily lamps; they are more used to serve the purpose of décor instead of lighting ever since they came into existence. The movement of wax in blobs mesmerizes and relaxes the watcher so much that it creates an enchanting effect. The wax moves in the shape of blobs in the lamp, which gives it the name %u201CLava lamp%u201D. They are sold in numerous shapes and sizes. Different wax colors are also available.


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.  


It works by an intriguing process. It has incandescent bulb or halogen bulb which warms a glass tube containing water and translucent or opaque mixture of wax and carbon tetrachloride. There are plenty of formulas but this is the most used one. The wax is minutely denser than water at room temperature whereas it decreases as it gets warmer. The wax eventually melts into liquid and travels to the surface in the shape of blobs. The blobs gradually cool downs.


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%u2019s 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 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.


Lava Simplex International was sold to Eddie Sheldon and Larry Haggerty of Haggerty Enterprises by Specter in the late seventies. It still continues to manufacture and sells these lamps under the name of Lava world. Lava world does not produce currently in USA and has given its manufacturing rights to China. In the 1990s, Craven-Walker, who had the constitutional rights to England and Western Europe, sold his rights to Cressida Granger whose company, Mathmos, continues to make Lava Lamps and related products. They are still prepared in the older plant in Poole.


Philip Quinn, 24, died in a lava lamp experiment. He was conducting an experiment in which he put a lava lamp on a stove. Eventually, the pressure got to be so overwhelmed it exploded.  The youth was standing a few steps away. But still, a shard was deep and sharp enough to kill him.