https://doi.org/10.1140/epje/s10189-022-00255-6
Tips and Tricks - Soft Matter
An optimized recipe for making giant bubbles
1
Laboratoire de Physique des Solides, Université Paris-Saclay, CNRS, 91405, Orsay, France
2
Slash Bubbles, rue de Versailles, 91300, Massy, France
e
emmanuelle.rio@universite-paris-saclay.fr
Received:
17
August
2022
Accepted:
16
November
2022
Published online:
22
December
2022
Large bubbles are primarily used in physics laboratories to study 2D turbulence, surface wavers, and fundamental properties of soap systems. Outside of physics, blowing large bubbles is also a part of many performances and shows. Both the scientific and artistic communities usually want to get reasonably stable foam films. The purpose of this article is to propose the main physical ingredients needed for an effective recipe to make stable films and bubbles. We propose controlled experiments to measure both the ease of generating a bubble, and its stability in different stabilizing solutions, which we choose by adding the ingredients contained in a bubble artist’s recipe one by one. Our main findings are that (i) the surfactant concentration must not be too high, (ii) the solution must contain long flexible polymer chains to allow for easy bubble generation and (iii) the addition of glycerol provides improved bubble stability by preventing evaporation. Finally, we propose an efficient recipe, which takes into account these considerations.
Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at https://doi.org/10.1140/epje/s10189-022-00255-6.
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© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to EDP Sciences, SIF and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2022. Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
