A shaken lava lamp is not always ideal and there are several reasons for this not being the right thing to do.
Having a lava lamp at home isn’t always going to be easy. There are times when the lava lamp will stop working and that can cause a person to start moving it around.
The best place to start is to ask, what happens if you shake a lava lamp?
Shaking a lava lamp can aggravate the silicone-based oil found in the lamp. This causes the oil to spread throughout the lamp making everything cloudy and clumpy. Many people report how their lava lamp stops flowing after being shaken.
Due to this, it’s important to be gentle with the lava lamp and understand what it is made of.
If you are gentle with the lava lamp, you will have a much easier time resetting it later on. Otherwise, you could do irreparable damage to the silicone-based oil inside causing it to spread everywhere.
Here is a look at a few reasons to not shake a lava lamp at home.
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Reasons To Not Shake A Lava Lamp
1. The Oil Is Fragile
A shook lava lamp is not going to be a pretty sight for the most part.
The reason has to do with the oil inside. This is not supposed to be aggravated and any type of aggressive movement will cause the oil to spread all over the place.
In some cases, the lava lamp will continue to work at a reduced rate. However, most of the time, it is just not going to work out at all.
If you are saying, “I shook my lava lamp” then it’s best to look inside to see where the oil is. If it has started to spread everywhere then the damage has been done. You will likely have to reset the lava lamp hoping it goes back to normal or replace it with a new one.
2. Oil Spreads Everywhere
Fixing lava lamps isn’t easy because of the silicone-based oil inside.
This oil is fragile as mentioned above but it also tends to spread rapidly. The oil is not going to be held back by anything and is designed to work without being shaken.
If it is shaken, the damage will be difficult to repair.
The oil is going to begin to flow throughout the lava lamp and that will be challenging to reel back in. This is reason enough to not try to shake a lava lamp hoping it gets better.
This is not a reasonable lava lamp repair nor the way you should be going about something like this.
3. Stops Flowing
When learning how to fix a shaken lava lamp, you will have to understand what the main symptom tends to be.
Most people are not going to notice until the lava lamp becomes clumpy. It will stop flowing the way it used to, which means its aesthetic appeal begins to go away.
The best thing you can do is to avoid shaking the lava lamp and simply putting it aside. Just doing something like this could help reset the lava lamp back to how it was.
4. Can Damage The External Shell
Most people will only focus on the oil.
Yes, this is important but what about the external shell of the lava lamp? This is going to be just as important as anything inside the lamp.
In this regard, you have to be careful about how you keep the external shell in place. The wrong approach could do a lot of damage and it’s the last thing you are going to want.
It can crack the external shell depending on how vigorous you were with the shaking. It is best to look at other options rather than trying to shake things loose inside the lava lamp.
Final Thoughts
What happens if you shake a lava lamp?
Shaking a lava lamp will cause its silicone-based oil to spread throughout the lamp. This causes the lava lamp to become clumpy and stop moving. To avoid damaging the lava lamp, it’s best to avoid shaking it.
Learning how to fix a lava lamp after shaking it is a good idea. You will want to make sure the lava lamp is reset by unplugging it from the wall. This will let you test how the oil settles before trying to run it again.
A lot of people don’t do this and just assume the lava lamp is done.
Take the time to test it out a little bit and reset the lava lamp.
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