Scientists find the secret to colossal bubbles
Justin Burton’s fascination with soap bubbles began in Barcelona, Spain, six summers ago. “It was hot and humid, and there were guys on the street making these huge bubbles,” he says. “I thought it was the coolest thing.” When he returned home, his sister gave him a giant bubble wand. It included a recipe for a bubble-making solution. Burton began to blow. Now he’s improved the recipe and is ready to share it.
By the way, Burton is hardly your typical bubble-blower. As a physicist at Emory University in Atlanta, Ga., he studies forces in nature. Those forces include effects on fluids that flow. The more he thought about bubbles, the more he wanted to know just how they were made.
“What is it about bubble solutions that makes them [stretch] without ripping — and for such a long time?” he asks. Now, he’s found out. And he and his team reported the results of their scientific investigation on August 1 at arXiv.org.