{"id":10628,"date":"2020-02-09T18:52:00","date_gmt":"2020-02-10T01:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/BigJimIndustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=10628"},"modified":"2020-04-27T18:55:35","modified_gmt":"2020-04-28T01:55:35","slug":"bubbles-bubbles-bubbles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2020\/02\/09\/bubbles-bubbles-bubbles\/","title":{"rendered":"Bubbles Bubbles Bubbles"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

from WIRED<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Secret to Blowing Massive Soap Bubbles<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

This physicist-approved recipe uses a dash of polymers to create world-record-scale bubbles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

by JENNIFER OUELLETTE, ARS TECHNICA<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"massive
PHOTOGRAPH: GETTY IMAGES<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

EVERYBODY LOVES BUBBLES, regardless of age\u2014the bigger the better. But to blow really big, world-record-scale bubbles requires a very precise bubble mixture. Physicists have determined that a key ingredient is mixing in polymers of varying strand lengths, according to  a new paper<\/a> in Physical Review Fluids<\/em>. That produces a soap film able to stretch sufficiently thin to make a giant bubble without breaking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bubbles may seem frivolous, but there is some complex underlying physics, and hence their study\u00a0has long been<\/a>\u00a0serious science. In the 1800s, Belgian physicist\u00a0Joseph Plateau<\/a>\u00a0outlined four basic laws of surface tension that determine the structure of soapy films. Surface tension is why bubbles are round; that shape has the least surface area for a given volume, so it requires the least energy to maintain. Over time, that shape will start to look more like a soccer ball than a perfect sphere, as gravity pulls the liquid downward (called “coarsening”).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bubbles and foams remain an active area of research. For instance, in 2016, French physicists worked out<\/a> a theoretical model for the exact mechanism for how soap bubbles form when jets of air hit a soapy film. They found that bubbles formed only above a certain speed of air, which in turn depends on the width of the jet of air. If the jet is wide, there will be a lower threshold for forming bubbles, and those bubbles will be larger than ones produced by narrower jets, which have higher speed thresholds. That’s what’s happening, physics-wise, when we blow bubbles through a ring at then end of a little plastic wand: the jet forms at our lips and is wider than the soapy film suspended within the ring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2018,\u00a0we reported<\/a>\u00a0on how mathematicians at New York University’s Applied Math Lab had fine-tuned the method for blowing the perfect bubble even further based on similar experiments with soapy, thin films. They concluded that it’s best to use a circular wand with a 1.5-inch perimeter and to gently blow at a consistent 6.9 cm\/s. Blow at higher speeds and the bubble will burst. Use a smaller or larger wand, and the same thing will happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[ click to continue reading at WIRED<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from WIRED The Secret to Blowing Massive Soap Bubbles This physicist-approved recipe uses a dash of polymers to create world-record-scale bubbles. by JENNIFER OUELLETTE, ARS TECHNICA EVERYBODY LOVES BUBBLES, regardless of age\u2014the bigger the better. But to blow really big, world-record-scale bubbles requires a very precise bubble mixture. Physicists have determined that a key ingredient is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-art","category-weirdness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10628"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10628\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}