Macro images of a soap film burst with color. Because the color comes from interference between light waves bouncing off the inner and outer surfaces of the soap film, the Keep reading
Tag: soap film
Flexible Filament Reduces Drag
Most shapes aren’t streamlined for fluid flow. We call these bulky, often boxy shapes, bluff bodies. Above, we see two examples of a bluff body, a flat plate, in a Keep reading
Collapsing Inside a Soap Film
There’s a common demonstration of surface tension where a loop of string is placed in a soap film and then the film inside the loop is popped, making it suddenly Keep reading
Soap Film Evolution
The beautiful colors of a soap film reflect its variations in thickness. As a film drains and evaporates, it turns to shades of gray and black as it gets thinner. Keep reading
Foam Collapse
Introduce the right additive and the bubble arrays in foam will collapse catastrophically. What you see above is high-speed video of a quasi-two-dimensional soap bubble foam collapsing. There are two Keep reading
Soapy Rainbows
The swirling psychedelic colors of a soap bubble come from the interference of light rays bouncing off the inner and outer surfaces of the film. As a result, the colors Keep reading
Soap Film Catenoid
Even very simple fluid systems can have surprising complexity. What you see here is a catenoid – the hourglass-like soap film that forms between two rings. In this case, the Keep reading
Bouncing Off a Film
Surface tension is the result of an imbalance between intermolecular forces near an interface. Imagine a water molecule far from the surface; it is surrounded on all sides by other Keep reading
Self-Healing Bubbles
Soap films have the remarkable property of self-healing. A water drop, like the one shown above, can pass through a bubble (repeatedly!) without popping it. This happens thanks to surfactants Keep reading
Songs in Soap
There are many beautiful ways to visualize sound and music – Chris Stanford’s fantastic “Cymatics” music video comes to mind – but this is one I haven’t seen. This visualization Keep reading