Lava lamps a learning tool for Campbell students

CAMPBELL — Lava lamps were back in style today for a group of ninth-graders.

Chelsea Glosser, a third-year teacher at Campbell Memorial High School, and her ninth-grade STEM class spent thismorning creating simple lava lamps to use as visual aids for their lesson on plate tectonics – the scientific theory detailing the movement of the plates that make up Earth’s outer layer.

The students’ lava lamps were different from the glass-and-wax novelty decor popular in the 1960s and 1970s; they used clear plastic bottles, vegetable oil, water and food coloring.

Once the bottles were prepared, the students dropped Alka-Seltzer tablets into the liquid, which created the iconic colorful bubbling that originally made the lava lamp popular.

“The lamps help provide a visual element to an abstract concept like convection currents in the Earth’s mantle. Obviously, we can’t go to the mantle, so we simulate the motion instead,” Glosser said. “It helps the students to remember the lesson long term.”

For the complete story, read Tuesday's Vindicator and Vindy.com