Mysterious Soap Bubbles and how they work.
Soap Bubbles and Light, where the rainbow colors come from.
History of bubbles?
If there were only one piece of writing I could recommend to you, that would introduce you to soap bubble history, science, performers, and pretty much everything else, this would be it.
It's an article that I've read was written for Discover Magazine a couple of decades ago I believe, though I can't seem to find the exact date or reference to it at their site. It's a really fine bit of reading that begins with an exploration of the career of Louis Pearl. If you want to read part one right now, click here and go to the bottom of the page. I've seen the whole article on various websites, but for sure you can find it complete at Louis' site: http://www.tangenttoy.com/.
In this half (part two) the article branches off into two other equally interesting directions.
First, it's bubble science. Don't let it scare you, but this isn't your basic "why are bubbles round & why do they have rainbow colors" science (you can get that elsewhere, but try here first). It's a quick look at what's new and what lies ahead in bubble studies.
I intend to bolster this article with footnotes and addendum, and hope to get reactions to it from bubble folks who have "been there and done that". People who can fill in the blanks, make corrections and flesh out the contents. (I've added the photos for edification and amusement.)
The Music of the Spheres (excerpt)
... That bubbles are perfectly spherical, for instance, illustrates the law of nature that decrees getting the most done using the least energy. Surface area can be said to equal energy, so bubbles and the soapy film they're made of will invariably seek to cover a given distance with a minimum of surface. Since a sphere surrounds a given volume using the least surface area, that's the shape a bubble takes, no matter what the shape of the opening used to produce it.
Because of this particular "genius" for comprehending instantly the easiest way to accomplish something, soap film can be used as a kind of natural calculator to figure out such complex problems as the most efficient route between several cities. By attaching two sheets of clear plastic by spacers representing the locations of the cities (allowing, say, half an inch of clearance between the sheets) and dipping the device into a soapy solution, you will be able to see how the film connects the dots.
The oceans are vast sinks for greenhouse gases, and many scientists think it's likely that these gases enter sea water through thin layers of bubbles formed by waves, surf, and rain. The idea of bubbles as heroic savior may seem a stretch, but obviously they are far more than mere froth. Of course, the bubbleocracy has never thought of bubbles as beautiful but dumb.
In one of Jorge Luis Borges' short stories, the author suggests that the great secrets of life are written out everywhere in plain sight, but human beings simply don't have the ability to decipher the languages they are written in. Looking at a photograph of soap bubbles in a cluster, it's not hard to imagine that some elusive but vital message is written there It is that implied message that so tantalizingly beckons Taylor and her fellow members of Minimal Surface Team. Like any other "ocracy", the bubbleocracy has its founders, heroes and legends.
(This photo of Eiffel and the photos related to the bubble festival below are © The Exploratorium, www.exploratorium.edu)
This kind of public fascination inspired a certain Eiffel Plasterer, one of bubble history's near-mythic figures, the American equivalent of C V Boys, but a showman rather than a scientist. Plasterer lived all his life on a farm in Indiana, and spent much of his time as an adult inventing bubble tricks to be performed for Midwestern audiences in the days when radio was an imperfect entertainment medium at best and television wasn't even a gleam in Philo Farnsworth's (or CBS's) eye. Eiffel -- born in 1899, of course, on the day Alexander Gustave Eiffel presented France with his tower at the Paris Exposition -- grew famous with his repertory of bubble tricks. At the same time other, more sensational forms of entertainment pushed vaudeville and carnivals to the edges of audience interest, the vogue for bubble performance dwindled, and with it Plasterer's fame. Then, late in his life, a television station in DeMoines, Iowa [??] revived his celebrity. To the bubble adepts who built their acts on the foundation of Plasterer's inventiveness, he was a combination Harry Houdini and Charlie Chaplin.
This is the fate of all bubbles, and normally it happens after a matter of seconds, or a minute at most. But the bubble in Pearl's mason jar shows no sing of aging. Like Cher, it seems to have discovered the secret of eternal youth - without surgery! "If you can protect a bubble from air currents, it can last a long time," Pearl says "I once had one go for a month. And in the end, they don't pop. What happens is that the bubble shrinks as the air slowly leaks out.
The only trouble was that the solution they used was so incredibly slippery that when the bubbles broke they left the floor really dangerous to walk on". The festival turned out to be so successful that two sequels were held before the air leaked out of that particular exhibition bubble.
One especially talented dolphin has even contrived a way to create a helix from her air bubbles. The creatures are not trained to do this, and aren't performing tricks for food; rather, they seem to blow bubble rings as a kind of leisure-time source of amusement. Once, the researchers blew soap bubbles in front of the window in the dolphins' tank, and one of the dolphins responded by producing a perfect ring of his own – the first known instance of cross-species communication through the language of bubbles.
When I got the Tonight Show, I had lots of calls from comedy clubs that had previously denied me gigs ("You're not really comedy.") but I chose, instead, to go to the newly emerging science museum in San Francisco with my idea of a Bubble Festival. I had already performed at the Exploratorium a few times but now I was hot and I wanted to direct the media's interest in me onto the science aspect of bubbles and I also wanted to use that interest to bring Eiffel out to San Francisco.
Frank Oppenheimer, the director and inventor of that marvelous new concept, a hands-on science center, loved the idea. He gave the greenlight and Ned Kahn, Ron Hipschman, Linda Dackman, and I gave a shape to the idea of a Bubble Festival.
I had sold it to them as inexpensive because "There are only two bubble shows in the whole world and if you gather them both you have a cheap festival." But, of course, each department of the Exploratorium added their own touch and the budget crept up and up.
Fortunately, the media responded. A story about me in the LA Times "From the streets to the Tonight Show" was published on the front of the entertainment section with huge photos. In the body of the story I was asked what my next project was and I told about the Bubble Festival. The media world loved the idea and they all did the same story "The kids and physicists are gathering this weekend in San Francisco for a (smile, wink) Bubble Festival!"
15,000 people came out that weekend. So did Louis Pearl and Sterling Johnson and more than a few other local bubble enthusiasts. Eiffel performed with his daughter Alice as his assistant. Eiffel and I alternated doing shows in the small (250 people or so) theater and I did shows on a stage set out in the larger open space for the masses.
When, two years later, we did another Bubble Festival, Sterling, Louie, and Richard Faverty were on the bill along with David Stein (inventor of the Bubble Thing), and the Sugiyama Brothers whom I had met in Japan and introduced to the Exploratorium folks. 17,000 people came to that weekend event.
From: THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
April 20, 1986
Where the Attraction Is Bursting in Air
OSMOSIS and surface tension can be a gas, and even a blast. So can refraction, and the bubbly spaces between the galaxies of the universe.
If you don't believe it, then you missed the Exploratorium's international fancy bubble blowers in action three years ago at the first great hilarious Bubble Festival in the museum.
But another chance is coming now, for the Exploratorium is staging its second world Bubble Festival Friday through next Sunday at the museum in the Palace of Fine Arts on San Francisco's Marina.
It includes a cast of thousands - literally thousands, for everyone who comes, not just the pros, will be part of the cast, with a chance to experiment by creating and flying and popping and blowing their own exotic bubbles.
Take, for example, 87-year-old Eiffel Plasterer, an Indiana sorghum farmer who can surround seven people inside a giant soap bubble 20 feet around, create a tower of bubbles one on top of another, and even seal a soap bubble inside a jar that won't pop for nearly a year.
Plasterer (that's his real name) has even taught high school physics - and why not? Bubbles, with no trouble, can make physics fun.
Then there's Tom Noddy, the one-time street entertainer, probably the world's most famous bubblologist and troubadour, who practices his trade from California to Europe to Japan to Australia.
Noddy uses only a wand and a bottle of dime-store soap solution to create shimmering cubes and dodecahedrons and revolving carousels and other delightful bubble wonders.
Architects blow bubbles; lawyers blow bubbles; a photographer named Richard Faverty makes bubbles like pretzels and doughnuts and even robots.
Every little kid - including everyone who's still a kid at heart - can blow bubbles and create iridescent soapy sheets, and they all will at this week's Exploratorium Bubble Festival.
On the more serious but still fun side, Stanford chemist Ilan Chabay will make bubbles filled with carbon dioxide that blow themselves into huge spheres.
He freezes them in dry ice to demonstrate the chemical and mechanical processes of osmosis and hemoglobin transport inside the human body.
In another science demonstration that's more like pure magic, Ze'ev Luz, vice president of Israel's Weizmann Institute of Science, will use his bubbles to illustrate principles of minimum energy, minimum time, and optical refraction.
The great Bubble Festival will feature all those performers, plus demonstrations of many unsuspected types of bubbles including beer foam, floating rafts, blown glass and soaring balloons.
The San Francisco Bubble Pops Symphony will even create music out of bursting bubbles.
The point of it all is that bubbles are not only amusing toys; they offer unique and easy-to-understand insights into many of the most significant phenomena of the Universe - from the nature of light to the nature of chemical reactions to the nature of the cosmos.
The Exploratorium's fame is growing world-wide these days as a unique and playful museum where science, art and entertainment all blend - making real the vision of the late physicist Frank Oppenheimer, who founded it in 1969.
And this weekend's Bubble Festival is typical of the city's "Palace of Delights." The details:
Friday night, 7 p.m.: party and performances for Exploratorium members and their families; any family can join now with a phone call to 563-7337, or at the door. Annual membership, including admission and all future events: $30.
Saturday and Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.: general adult admission $3, including a six-month Exploratorium pass; 17 and under, free; Seniors, $1.50.
Continuous bubble-blowing exhibitions, demonstrations, lectures, food and music throughout both days, with special scheduled performances in the museum's McBean Theater; theater admission, $1.
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The Bubble Festival will be held Friday, Saturday and next Sunday at the Exploratorium at the Palace of Fine Arts.