- Soap_Bubble_Bubbleology_homebrew_Recipe

Quick Start: Wet Stuff,

Soap Solutions
Science &

A Wee Bit of History

You will find my no-longer-secret recipe here.

This page concerns the science behind soap bubble recipes. As we discussed in the weather page, climates vary radically in the US and around the world. It's important to know how to brew up a batch of bubbler juice that will work for you where ever you may be.

Here we'll look at the science of our wet stuff. It's just an introduction, mind you. Elsewhere in SoapBubbler.com you're going to find more information about everything we discuss here. This one page will be enough to get you thinking, and experimenting, as you begin your quest for the perfect bubble brew.

Were there bubbles? Back, way before the days of the dinosaurs? Back when the Earth was just starting to cool. Were there bubbles? I'd imagine so. Bubbles happen all the time in nature. Bogs bubble smelly gas. Camels bubble spit.

Lava rocks formed from volcano flows are filled with tiny bubbles. Bubbles of air trapped millions of years ago in glacier ice are telling us a lot about our planet's past. A leading cosmological theory has our whole universe patterned after a bubble. There have always been bubbles.

But it took people to make bubbling an art. That point is proven by all the bubbles featured in art. Once the invention of soap came along, how long do you figure it was before someone discovered the true magic of soapy water? I bet no time at all.

Why do bubbles form from soapy water? I'm glad you asked. C.V. Boys gave a series of lectures in London back in the 1800's on this very topic. In his book, SOAP BUBBLES Their Colors and the Forces Which Mold Them, you can find the long answer. Here, let's just cut to the quick. A bubble's skin has an elastic property and it's pulling in from all directions at once. (You do remember this from your wands lesson, yes?) The skin itself has three layers. A layer of water molecules sandwiched between two layers of soap molecules. You see, soap loosens up the bonds of the water molecules to each other, allowing them to stretch in a thin layer rather than just sit around as a drop.

It's the thin skin of the bubble that allows for the rainbow color effect too. Because light doesn't only reflect away from the outside face of the soap skin, it reflects from the inside face too. So the light waves are made to be out of synch on their return trip away from the bubble to your eye. White light (a combination of all colors) is "broken" into the various colors that make it. Depending on how thick the bubble skin is, you're going to see different colors reflected. Is all this science necessary you might be asking? Yes. Just that little bit is enough to get us through on this quick start page.

Water, soap, evaporation, skin thickness. These are the things that run through chemist's minds when they're tasked with creating a bubble solution. The solution needs water, of course.

There is a debate among bubblers as to whether or not distilled water is best for bubble solutions. In many if not most places (at least in the US), I now believe tap water is fine to use. The thing with distilled water is it has a lower pH than regular water, spring water, etc... pH plays a big roll in successful bubble solutions. Solutions sometimes fail if the pH drops below 7. Since we are using so much detergent, with a high pH, there hasn't been a problem with the low pH of distilled water. However, currently there are excellent bubble solutions on the market that have tried to achieve nearly neutral pH to take the sting out in case it gets in your eyes. These products are adversely impacted with the low pH of distilled water. So, try brewing with just your tap water first. Then try bottled spring water to see if you get better results. If you do, it might be because it contains fewer salts or minerals. If the bottled spring water was better, try distilled water which has none of the minerals or other deleterious content.

But not just any water* see block text above for more about this. The water needs to be free from minerals and chemicals found (usually) in water from the tap. That's what you would call "hard" water. Bubbles need "soft" water, like rain water or distilled water. C.V. Boys' soap bubble formula used rain water, but you can get by with commonly found distilled water. Why soft water? Because all the junk in hard water reacts with the surfactant, which makes the surfactant less effective.

So, what's a surfactant? Read on...

The solution also needs a surfactant (surface active agent) to loosen the electrical bonds water molecules have with each other. The surfactant is soap. Soap makes the bubble skin "softer" and flexible. You'll find bubblers are generally divided into two camps when it comes to which soap to use. (Actually we should use the word detergent. Detergent is a scientifically invented soap alternative, with out much of the yechy stuff old fashioned soap had in it. Think animal fat and lye.) There are bubblers who swear by Dawn liquid dish detergents. That's me. Other's are loyal to Joy brand liquid dish detergents. Bubblers in other countries have their own allegiances. Then there's the whole "ultra or non-ultra debate". But, I'll leave that for another spot in this site.

By the way, if you're at all interested in learning more about soap, here's an excellent primer. Ellen Beers 1929 book. A very funny book written a long time ago which probes the wonders of soaps around us. It's an online copy of an old science text. It's a hoot.

Anyhow, like it or not, the stuff that makes nearly all of what we have at home that bubbles, bubble - from toothpaste to car wash - is a nifty chemical called Sodium Lauryl Sulphate. I believe it is the leading surfactant in production today. Go ahead. Read the label of some cleaner in your house that bubbles. You'll find Sodium Lauryl Sulphate, or one of it's kissing cousins.

If you're like me, at some point you will want to experiment with this chemical on it's own. You will wonder where to get it with out all of the other stuff in liquid dish detergent. When that time comes, let me save you a night of internet research here: Go to a tack shop (horse stuff) and get a tub of ORVUS. Case closed. ORVUS is made by Procter & Gamble. It's a white cream of SLS and water. As a horse wash it's nice because it's gentle and suds up water beyond your wildest dreams. Just a dab will do for you to have very soapy water.

But my friends, soapy water is not enough. If it were, Gazillion bubble liquid (which is also pretty good, though I hate the tiny multi-holed wand that comes packed in it's bottle) would never have been invented.

Some day you will experiment and combine various amounts of ORVUS (Sodium Lauryl Sulphate) and distilled water but I bet you don't stick with it for long. At first you will be amazed. Beautiful, clean looking bubbles result. When you then try to catch one of those bubbles to do something with it, your hopes will be dashed. These basic bubbles are fragile as glass and extremely short-lived. I found with my experiments that bubbles made with ORVUS are very brittle. They pop with very little stress on them. The bubbles just tend to "snap". It's even difficult for the wand to hold a film after blowing a couple of bubbles from the wand.

If instead you let the bubbles float away... You'll realize they're doomed to a very short life. Their skins evaporate quickly. Evaporation (water molecules jumping from the bubble skin into the air) thins the skin rapidly. And then, pop! No more bubble. Evaporation is one of the leading factors in early bubble mortality.

And how do you counter this curse? How do you make bubbles that can be bounced, combined, decorated and in other ways manipulated? (See photo on left.) How can performers dare to boast that they can churn out a bubble show even on an arid mid winter day? Related to this would be, "How can one possibly mix up a bubble solution capable of making a bubble as big as a car?" Wouldn't... shouldn't the fragile skin be torn apart instantly by all the forces acting against it? The answer is once again, soap and water are not enough. You need a little something to firm up the bubble's skin and delay the aging processes of evaporation and gravity.

What do you mean? We haven't discussed gravity yet? Well don't worry. This won't take long. Remember, a bubble's skin is a liquid. The fluid in the skin wants to puddle at the bottom of the bubble. This has been called by others, "The deadly drip." What with gravity pulling the liquid down the sides of the bubble and evaporation taking it's toll, a bubble soon finds itself with a guy problem. The bubble's version of male pattern baldness. It's getting thinner at the top. Thinner all the time. Luckily, guy's heads don't fly apart when their hair gets too thin. (They buy red convertibles instead.) So the questions remains eternal. What delays evaporation? How to stop that "thinning at the top" issue?

Skin Thickness. And so, after talking about water and soap, we get to the meat of the matter. What conditioners do we need to add to the bubble recipe to ensure it will spawn bubbles with healthy, colorful, self healing skin that resists evaporation doesn't add too much weight and increases the viscosity (thickness) of the water so the tug of gravity can be mitigated to delay "thin top"? Ah ha! I knew that would be your next question.

Self healing - a bubbler's term for a quality in the bubble's skin that allows it to close up and "heal" even as it's being torn apart into smaller pieces or bubbles made from it's very own skin are being blown into it.

Hygroscopic substances attract moisture. Calcium chloride comes packed in those little bags you find in some electronic equipment shipping boxes. Calcium chloride is hygroscopic. It's protecting the electronics from humid air by sucking in water molecules from the air and retaining it. It would do your bubble solution harm, so forget sodium chloride. We need something that is hygroscopic and incorporates completely by dissolution in water. Now we're talking glycerine!

In his book, EXPERIMENTS WITH BUBBLES, Robert Gardner put it nicely: Glycerine is hygroscopic and dissolves in water. Glycerine's attraction for water is believed to reduce the evaporation of soap bubble films and thus improve the life of the bubble. He further goes on to speculate that glycerine was a major ingredient in Eiffel Plasterer's solutions, which actually remain secret to this day. Gardner has Eiffel's longest lived bubble clocking in at 340 days. I heard it was longer than that. Any way you slice it, Plasterer's bubbles lasted a good long time.

Personally, I believe the key ingredient was Sorghum Syrup. Eiffel was a bubbleman, science teacher, railroad aficionado, and sorghum farmer. The sorghum would be collected, boiled and reduced to make a molasses type syrup. I think his knowledge of science and sorghum were the keys to his success. But then again... Who knows?!?

His longest lived bubbles were mounted on pocket-watch glasses which were glued to the bottom of a glass jar. The jar was then sealed and the bubble put on a shelf in Plasterer's basement, where he would then invert the jar every once in a while to beat gravity-draining liquid at it's own game. People have said that his bubbles didn't pop. They just gradually deflated.

Did Eiffel Plasterer invent the first "touch-a-bubble" type fluid? The world will never know. He died with his secrets and if his sister knows - she's not telling. Tom Noddy asked her what would happen to Eiffel's equipment and recipes when she was gone. Tom says she told him the equipment is mostly rotted away and his recipes wouldn't do anyone any good because the ingredients are so old fashioned. (This past story is my recollection of Tom's post the soapbubblefancier's group on yahoo. Join up and check the archives for factual reference.)

Are there other hygroscopic materials that will dissolve in water that would benefit a bubble mix? Right now, I just don't know. But if I ever find out you'll be able to read it here. How about you? Is there some hygroscopic substance you are experimenting with? Please, let me know.

©Tom Noddy Photo © Olivier Baise found on PictureTank

While we're talking about glycerine, I should mention the fact that there are different kinds of glycerine, depending on their derivation and purity. Glycerine used to be, and might still be, a byproduct of the soap making process. Glycerine derived that way would often be the result of a complicated process that starts with rendering animal fat. The glycerine you will find at chemical supply houses and on the shelf (skin care isle) of most large drugstore chains, is thicker than the stuff I've taken to using. It's my belief that kosher grade vegetable glycerine is best. It's found in health food stores and online and is rendered from processing mostly coconuts. Use what ever you can find, but keep trying different glycerines. You'll be glad you did.

Anyhoo, it's glycerine. Most bubble recipes worth their salt (another bad ingredient by the way) include glycerine because it's hygroscopic. But the benefits don't stop there... it thickens the brew too. And that, my friends leads us to a final discussion on this topic of soap bubble formula ingredients...

©3Tom Noddy Photo © Olivier Baise found on PictureTank

Viscosity. You remember viscosity is all about thickness. And for bubblers, thickness is another sticky subject. Some like and need it, some don't. Eiffel used to talk about how "fast" (less viscous/thin) or "slow" (more viscous/thick) his solutions were. Read Tom Noddy's book–Tom Noddy's BUBBLE MAGIC. He devotes two pages to his visit with Eiffel. Tom writes, "Since I always used dime-store juice, I didn't know what he meant by 'fast solution.' Eiffel explained that he had formulated nine different solutions for his show. He referred to them as fast and slow, and he called his bubbles wet and dry, heavy and light." I hope my Tom Noddy envy isn't showing too terribly but he's had such uniquely interesting experiences!

Adding thickeners to your bubble solution will not only help you counter evaporation, it delays bubble bursts in another important way. More viscous solutions will help delay the deadly influence of gravity (see hi-lighted text above for more information about this).

Viscosity for bubbles is like water for us. We can't live with out it, but too much will kill us. It's the same thing with bubbles. If your solution is too viscous the bubbles will be stiff and heavy. They will resist bubble in bubble tricks because the film is just too fortified for your breath to punch it's way through. Highly viscous bubble solution also makes heavy bubbles which fall to the ground quicker and make doing tricks like caterpillars (see above) very difficult.

So how about less viscous solutions? Well, gravity will drain the water quicker, which will thin the top and like I said, Pop! A thinning top is bad for bubbles because their skins are only a few hundred molecules deep to begin with. Once the skin thins out, the elastic properties of the film will rip it apart.

So, what's a bubbler to do? It all depends on what kind of bubbles you want to make. Big outdoor bubbles need to be fast, so the the juice can pull off of the strings fast enough to feed the growing bubble. Less viscous also means less heavy. If you're creating bubbles the size of beach balls or playhouses, a heavy mix will make them drop like a stone.

Tiny bubbles like those I'm making (on the right) can be and often are made with highly viscous fluids. I'm using Gymboree Bubbles and their tiny bubble making wand. Gymboree solution is thick. A bubble wand with a typical sized opening will not work with this solution. But it was engineered to go with the bubble blow pipe I'm using. The thick solution clings to to the eight or nine tiny spouts at the end of the pipe. It will keep cranking out bubbles for nearly as long as I can keep blowing a single breath through it. The bubbles are tiny, but they last a LONG time. I've found some bubbles lurking on my ceiling a day after using this pipe.

Commercial bubble toy makers in recent years have been releasing different blends of their solutions to go with their different bubble makers. Gazillion is an excellent example of this. Some of their toys create zillions of tiny bubbles and use their original blend. When they started coming out with toys that make big bubbles, they released Gazillion Gold to go with it.

Hydroxyethylcellulose. Glycerine adds to the viscosity of most bubble solutions, as it's thick. My thinking right now is that the other major ingredient in bubble solutions, to make them more viscous is Hydroxyethylcellulose. Hydroxyethylcellulose is a major ingredient on one of my favorite secret additives~Personal Lubricants. KY Jelly for instance lists it high up on the list of ingredients. I plan on writing more about Hydroxyethylcellulose elsewhere on the site, but I'll tell you now if you get it straight-up, it's a whitish, fine powder. And I have found it straight up through the manufacturer as a sample: Hercules Co makes it, a couple of other companies do too.

You will find that Mr. Bubbles is a common ingredient in home-made bubble solutions. It brings a fine quality to a home brew. It makes the bubble skin more supple or "self healing". Bubbles made with Mr. B. can be roughly handled but they resist popping. Big bubbles will be torn apart into smaller bubbles. I believe Mr. B. uses Hydroxyethylcellulose.

You will also find I do not like Miracle Bubbles brand commercial bubble solution. The reason? It doesn't bring the self-healing properties to my juice. Recipes including Miracle Bubbles seem to both evaporate and die in other ways quicker than when I use Mr. Bubbles. I experimented to find out why.

I evaporated equal amounts of Mr. B. and Miracle Bubbles. When all was said and done, the Mr. Bubbles ended up a very thick, glycerin concentrate with a smooth surface. The Miracle Bubbles was gummy and lumpy, like when rubber cement or contact cement (glue) dries. When I pointed this out to a friendly chemist, he said that was likely the case. Some solutions are thickened with gums, others with chemicals such as Hydroxyethylcellulose. If Miracle bubbles takes the gum route, I think that is likely the reason bubbles made with it are not so self healing. That's my opinion, but I'm sticking to it!

This, posted in 2008, is one of the "new kids on the block". Lubes-wise.... Click on the pic to visit the Jorgenson link.

So, there you have it. You've completed your (not so) basic bubbleology class. Is there more to learn? Sure there is! But I think right now what you need is time with bubbles. Get out there, mix up some solution and have some fun. Get some experience. I'll be here when you get back to talk more about bubbles with you. The rest of the site is devoted to more advanced bubble play, creativity and performance. Just what you'll be looking for in a very short time, but for now... get bubbling!

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Quick Start Lesson Links: 1: Where . 2: Weather
3: Wands . 4: Wet Stuff