Make Your Own Lava Lamp
If you're a going to attempt to make your own lamp, we have all the formulas here. First I should say that the experience can be fun but it is not neccessarily cheap. As a matter of fact, just buying a new lamp is probably cheaper. On the other hand, the obsessively inquisitive won't sleep until they crack the code!

The difficult part about making your own liquid motion lamp is, of course, the motion. We won't go into the lamp base too much. The store-bought ones use a 40w appliance bulb in a metal housing which directs the heat to the underside of the glass container. If you're making your own base, we recommend installing a dimmer switch so that you can control your heat output.

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