Soap Bubble

The easiest ways are to use commercially produced soap bubble fluid (marketed as a toy) or to simply put some dish washing soap in water. However, this latter might not work as well as expected, and there are several tricks to improve the soap sud formula:

Procedure:

• Leaving the soap sud in an open container overnight makes it thicker, too. But again, if the solution becomes too heavy it will be harder too make soap bubbles.
• Bubbles or foam on the surface of the soap sud should be avoided by stirring gently, skimming them away or simply waiting until they are gone.
• How easy it is to make soap bubbles depends on a vast number of factors. Every soap is different, and environmental conditions influence performance, too. For example, dusty air is unfavourable, and so is wind. Also, the more humid the air is, the better, which means making soap bubbles is easier on rainy days. Altogether, the best procedure for finding the perfect solution is the trial and error method.

Bubble blowers:

The easiest way is to use one of the plastic blowers that are sold with most commercial soap bubble solutions. However, as the blower's diameter determines the size of the soap bubble it might be necessary to build a blower oneself. Generally, any closed ring structure works. A blower can be made by bending wire into loop with a handle, where wire should be thick enough so the ring remains stiff. It can be improved by wrapping thread or bandages around the wire so the soap water can stick better to the ring.

A "giant bubble" blower, using a cloth loop attached to a plastic wand, with a slide permitting the loop to be gently opened or closed, was popularized by Klutz Press Publishing, which published a bubble-blowing book with the blower attached.

Usage

Soap bubbles and maths

A soap film forms a natural minimal surface. Minimal surfaces have been an area of intense mathematical and scientific study over the past 15 years.

As an example: In 1884 Schwarz already proved that a spherical soap bubble is the least-area way of enclosing a given volume of air. However, only recently, in the year 2000, it was proved that two merged soap bubbles are the least-area way of enclosing two given volumes of air, called the Double Bubble Theorem.