Death of the Lava Lamp – Edison vs. Fluro

The sixties gave us lots of new things, noticeably a drug scene and love making in a more casual setting, it also gave birth to the Lava Lamp. The rocket shaped glass canister with the blob liquid inside that when you turn it on moves up and down like lava. This is all made possible by heating the fluid with incandescent light bulb placed under the canister. The fluid heats and then rises, cools at the top and then sinks back to the bottom. Anyhow, the whole lava lamp experience (granted it isn’t an overwhelmingly good one) is based on the heat from the light bulb. The theory goes that the normal incandescent light bulb uses 90% of its energy to create heat, the other 10% gives us the light. So it’s perfect for use in those crazy sixties home wares.

Enter John Howard’s Liberal government, who under the pressure of carbon scare mongers, decided to ban the incandescent light bulb in favour of the fluorescent variety. What a great idea that was, banning the light we’ve been used too since Thomas Edison perfected it around 1880. It produces a warm light which can be varied by voltage regulation and tinting on the glass. Due to the heat produced from the globe it’s commonly used for brooding boxes with hens, reptile warming lights etc.

We are removing an invention that has been in use for over 100 years, and all because of some un-documented beleif of a global warming crisis. Fluro globes have problems that none of these policies take into account, like price, colour of light, warm up period, dangerous chemicals and lifespan when used in on/off situations. This was a rushed decision by a pressured government wanting to show its enviromental side. Now we have Penny Wong as our Climate Change minister who will no doubt cause more rubbish policies to become standard.

Buy up those old globes if you want them to be around for a little longer, say you buy 50, you should be right for over 10 years. Long enough to allow for technology to catch up with these new fluro style globes.