The Physics Behind Building an Enduring Soap Bubble

upstart writes:

Physics models and real-world experiments help keep bubbles from popping:

Blowing soap bubbles, besides being a favorite pastime for children, also happens to be an art form and a subject of interest for physicists. Emmanuelle Rio, Francois Boulogne, Marina Pasquet, and Frederic Restagno from the Laboratory of Solid State Physics at the University of Paris-Saclay have been studying bubbles for years, trying to understand the different processes at play in these innocuous-looking structures.

"Bubbles are important as they appear in many places, including washing products, cosmetics, building materials, and also in nature. For example, sea foam plays a role in terms of the exchanges between the atmosphere and the sea," Boulogne said.

Now, the team has described a key event in the life of bubbles: when they pop.

[...] Boulogne stated that although there is a link between temperature and aging of the bubbles, the impact of low temperatures on when the bubbles pop remains to be understood-and is likely to stay that way for a while. "So far, we have no model that can make this prediction. Understanding the stability of bubbles is a challenge that will take several decades," he said.

[...] Working with the French artist Pierre-Yves Fusier, who specializes in bubbles art, Rio and her colleagues developed the recipe, which consists of 40 milliliters of dishwashing liquid, 100 milliliters of glycerol, and 1 gram of long polymer such as the naturally occurring guar gum mixed in 1 liter of water. Using this recipe, Rio created 5 cm-diameter bubbles in her laboratory that lasted an hour.

Read more of this story at SoylentNews.