> It would be interesting to see whether the thermal effects actually
> scaled up in a linear way. There is no good reason to think that
> they would if existing small lamps are the only experience base.
> I'm told that getting lamps to work well with differeing envelope
> shapes is something of an art. .

I wondered whether they'd thought it through. He was asked about
the town's power bill for it, and replied that most of the energy would
be at the start, to get it heated up, and after that it would be quite
cheap to run. But the effect of a lava lamp comes about because
the top is losing heat so you have to keep pumping heat in at the
bottom. It seemed to be a giant leap of faith simply making a large
version of what's a pretty delicate balance. From experience in my
previous life as a process engineer in a resin plant I know what sort
of problems you get scaling up a 1 litre lab batch to a 2000kg kettle.
The dynamics are totally different. Anyway, good luck to them

> Ok, I've gotta ask: How the he!! do you find this stuff?? :=)
>
>     I'm sure he just typed giantlavalamp into Google :-)

Whoa, back the truck up. You can do that ?

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