Trivia: 05/03/11 Bubble Magic

TODAY'S MYSTERY QUOTE

QUOTE: "Never mistake motion for action."

HINT: (1899-1961), American author and journalist.

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RANDOM TIDBITS

A bubble, like a balloon, is a very thin skin surrounding a volume of air. The rubber skin of the balloon is elastic and stretches when inflated.

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If you blow a bubble and close the opening by flipping the wand over, the tension in the bubble skin tries to shrink the bubble into a shape with the smallest possible surface area for the volume of air it contains.

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Since bubbles always try to minimize surface area, two bubbles will merge to share a common wall. If the bubbles are the same size as the bubbles to the left, this wall will be flat. If the bubbles are different sized, the smaller bubble, which always has a higher internal pressure, will bulge into the larger bubble.

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If you ever try to blow bubbles with just pure water, it won't work. The surface tension in plain water is just too strong for bubbles to last for any length of time. One other problem with pure water bubbles is evaporation: the surface quickly becomes thin, causing them to pop.

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When two waves of light combine, the waves can meet each other crest-to-crest, adding up and reinforcing the effect of each other, or they can meet crest-to-trough, cancelling each other out so that they have no effect. When they meet crest-to-trough, for every "up" vibration in one wave, there is a corresponding "down" vibration in the other wave. This combination of equal ups and downs causes complete cancellation or interference. Interference is responsible for the color of bubbles.

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If you let a bubble hang from a bubble wand for awhile, the interference colors begin forming horizontal stripes - because the bubble film is thicker at the bottom than at the top, forming a wedge shape. As the bubble drains, the wedge of bubble solution gets thinner and thinner.

(www.exploratorium.edu)

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QUOTE: "Never mistake motion for action."

ANSWER: Ernest Hemingway.

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