Soap bubbles are fun. Have you ever tried them? Get a straw and a mugful of soap solution. Coat hangers make giant wands to make bubbles. Pipe cleaners are hard to get but are good for bubble making.
What is a soap bubble?
A soap bubble is a thin film of soapy solution, spherical in shape with a colourful, sparkling surface and air trapped inside it. The air pressure inside a bubble is higher than the air pressure outside the bubble.
Landing a bubble
You can land a bubble without having it go bust. Pour some extra glycerin into the soap solution and make a bubble that is not too big. Blow it and then gently land it on your wet hand.
Did you know?
In cold places soap bubbles behave differently. Due to the freezing temperature the thin film of water on the bubble freezes and the bubble turns translucent. It may slowly deflate or collapse as the air pressure inside reduces. Then the bubble may crumble which feels like thin onion skin.
Bubbles between glass panes
Take an adult's help to do this. Hold two glass panes a centimetre apart. Start blowing bubbles between them.
Notice that since the bubbles are close to one another they start fusing and form a network. Each bubble is six-sided, similar to the beehive network.
Bubbles inside a bubble
Another fun thing to try is to blow smaller bubbles inside a big bubble. First blow a big bubble with a big wand. You can insert a straw into the big bubble while it is still young without it going bust. Once the straw is inserted, start blowing smaller bubbles inside the big bubble.
Bubble pyramids and castles
Blow bubbles on a flat surface either a table or the floor. Two adjacent bubbles will tend to join and share a wall. You can go on adding bubbles one on top of the other to make a bubble pyramid or a bubble castle and have a competition with friends to see who makes the largest.
This fun exercise lets you observe many things. You will notice that two equal sized bubbles when fused share a flat wall. When a big bubble and small bubble are fused you will notice that the small bubble bulges out into the bigger bubble and the shared wall is not flat but curved.
Colours in a bubble
The best part about bubbles is the colours. The colours start appearing a few seconds after the bubble has formed. Thin lines of colour start appearing on a new bubble. The bands of light widen and you can see the rainbow colours. Slowly, the colours become brighter. You will notice there is a black band that separates the colour bands. The black band widens and eats up the colour bands until the whole bubble is black. This happens just before the bubble bursts.
