Step one, discover how much I didn't know about the world of bubbling


Professor Bubbles' book had an awesome and troubling influence on me. It was tempting to drop my Weather show research and go whole hog into bubbles. Indeed, I did try those tricks of his. I brewed up his recipes. Worked on new ideas. But the weather show needed to get done too. I managed to do both, racking up many late, late nights.

FYI: WILD ABOUT WEATHER (with it's single bubble) toured over 50 libraries this summer of '05. I just finished up my last summer show as a matter of fact. Weather is currently part of my repertory of educational programs and is booked for school assemblies in CT, MA, RI. Now all of my free time is available for bubbles. Which is why I'm finally creating SoapBubbler.com. I need a way to process the information and keep track of ideas. But, back to the story...

Research is my thing. It's not unusual for me to spend whole nights surfing the web, finding sites with obscure information to feed my cravings to know more about what ever I'm into at the time. When not working on Weather, I was bubbling on the web.

First stop: Amazon.com to buy a couple of books my local library didn't have or couldn't get. Tom Noddy's BUBBLE MAGIC. Bernie Zubrowski's BUBBLES. MAGIC WITH SOAP BUBBLES by Ormond McGill. THE UNBELIEVABLE BUBBLE BOOK, Klutz Press by John Cassidy and David Stein (inventor of the bubble thing). Lewis Pearl's LIGHTS CAMERA BUBBLES video was a blast. Once again, I avoided Casey Carle's book (even with it's good reviews) because I thought by this point I might someday - in the far off distant future - be doing bubbles in a show and I didn't want his strong style, sense of play or brand of humor to influence me - it would be too hard to unlearn later.

While I waited for the books to arrive, I Googled. I Googled every combination of soap bubble, bubble entertainment, soap solution, bubble science, on and on. I Googled, I bookmarked, I read, reread and digested. You've likely done the same thing. Perhaps that's how you got here. I found sites devoted to outdoor bubbling, clown bubbling, scientific papers about soap films, most of the major bubble player's home pages, short hobby pages devoted to different recipes and ingredients, a short movie about Eiffel Plasterer... I found many bubbling machines and wand types to make different kinds of bubbles. I learned bubbles are important to doctors, the mining industry, fire fighters, deep sea divers and beer makers. This was just skimming the surface.

What I really learned was how much there was yet to learn. Each soap bubbler had their own way of doing things. Personality, locale and particular use comes into play. Sites had differing opinions about recipe ratios and suggestions for additives, different methods of building wands, different ways of presenting bubbles... Even quite a bit about anti-bubbles for those not interested in uncle bubbles. I devoured every opinion, knowing they would all have to be tested someday to be proven true/not true for myself if I were ever to put them to use. Am I still efforting this? You bet.

I thought my first mission would be to search for "the perfect recipe". I was wrong. Commercial or home made, it didn't matter. As Richard Faverty suggested, there is no "perfect recipe". I took to heart his suggestion to experiment and aim for today's best recipe based on today's climate where ever you happen to be bubbling today.

First, I had to learn more about the chemistry and physics of soap spheres to help me evaluate various solutions I might concoct. Ever more excited, I leaped into soap bubble science and minutia.

I learned that bubble skins or films have three layers. A layer of water sandwiched between layers of soap molecules. Since bubble skins are fluid, the bottom of a bubble will pool excess fluid due to gravity, drip & simply get heavy, while the top of the bubble thins out. A bubble hanging on a wand will live longer because the top is fed liquid stored in the fins of the wand. Deeper fins hold more juice. The drip can be wiped off with a wet straw. Smooth wands (wire or coat hanger) wrapped with cotton string will hold a reservoir of fluid to feed the bubble longer. Too big a reservoir and things just get messy.

Bubbles are rounded because the skin is elastic, pulling in with equal force from all around, trying to contain a volume of trapped gas in the most efficient way possible. Clusters of bubbles will alter the shape of interior bubbles allowing you to create what look like pyramid shaped bubbles, or cubical. Using a (wet) straw you can make a pre-formed bubble grow and shrink in diameter to adjust it's size, thanks to that elastic skin.

The air pressure in a small bubble is greater than the air pressure in a bigger bubble so stop blowing so hard as the bubble grows in size. The wall separating two differing sized connected bubbles will bow into the bigger bubble.

Anything dry will pop a bubble, including a dry spot on the wand so dip the wand stem deep. Anything wet can come in contact with, even pass through a bubble. Wet hands make cool bubble wands. Generating bubbles with soapy hands and then releasing and catching them, bouncing them, wobbling them... A bubble in hand is worth two in the air. (Later I found some materials will not pop a bubble. At least not all the time. Knit gloves allow you to handle a bubble, supporting it from the bottom where the film is thickest. Some fabrics, felt for example, allow the bubble to drop onto a surface and not immediately pop.)

The climate, that I knew something about! A good thing too. It turns out the key to great bubbling is being able to "read" the atmosphere. Indoors and out. Wild About Weather research helped me there. Climate is what you expect the weather to be like at a particular time of year. Weather is what you get every day. It's all about what's going on in the air. Think: atmosphere. Temperature, that's easy. The warmer it is the faster liquids evaporate. Moving air: Breezes and drafts happen as high pressure air rushes to low pressure.

Humidity. Ah humidity! The ultimate insight. The more water molecules in the air around you as you bubble, the longer lived the bubbles will be. High humidity delays evaporation. So that's one big reason why I was having troubles with my bubbles. Winter in New England is notoriously arid. Indoors with artificially heated air is really, really dry. The warm dry air encouraged the water molecules to abandon the bubble. OH!

It's then that I realized the ultimate truth in bubbling. Climate change is happening minute by minute. Like the Scouts say, "Be prepared." You can't easily change the climate so you must adapt the mix. (Or alter your expectations.) Sure, indoors you can block air vents to stop drafts. Outdoors you can move into the shade where it's cooler. But unless you live under the canopy of a damp rain forest, the biggest challenge facing a bubbler is the need to adapt solutions to fit the day. Just like Richard said.

So I'd traveled full circle, but now I was armed with information. It was time to start experimenting. Time to come up with what I hoped would be my perfect "base" mix. Something I could adapt to fit the day. Easy, right?

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