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by Luis10 on July 12th, 2006

Luis10

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Are bubbles a liquid or what?

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  • by DenverYay on July 12th, 2006

    DenverYay

    I suppose it depends on which bubbles you're talking about ;-).

    I'll give you what I hope is a pretty simple example using some simple science. Yay, no physics or riga-pseudo-pnuemo-alpha-coleatosis!

    A few questions first :

    When you pour Palmolive in a sink and run some water what is one of the things that you get?

    - Bubbles

    When you eat three week leftover fish tacos what is one of the things that you get??

    - Bubbles

    Your answer, before we get started :

    A bubble is, technically I'd guess - air.

    A bubble could, be looked at as a pocket of air that found it's way inside a liquid and stayed there for a given amount of time. Take freshly poured soda, beer, or any other carbonated beverage you can find. Note how the bubbles behave. Wild. Many different phenomena are happening simultaneously. Surface tension (on the walls of the glass), dissolution, compression, molecular transportation (okay so I'm getting a little off-track with my mumbo-jumbo; sorry).

    The reason a bubble stays a bubble, is that the weight of the atmosphere (a.k.a. 'atmospheric pressure') pushes down on the liquid. The air that is trapped is... compressed, I guess - (like squeezing a balloon) from all directions, resulting in a spherical shape. If the air can dissolve in the water fast enough, the bubble would go away. However, this process is limited by the solubility of air (how well it will dissolve in water) in the liquid, and how fast air can be transported into the liquid.

    A very cool 'Bubble Experiment' (and very cheap, and very easy - so GO DO IT NOW!). Do this OUTSIDE, away from valuables, and be prepared to possibly make a huge mess.

    - 1 pack of mint Mentos. Get the brand Mentos and the mint kind. Others might work, feel free to try, but I know 'MINT MENTOS' work for this.

    - Several 2 liters of Pepsi (yes, get Pepsi, or try others but I know Pepsi works). You'll want more than one, 'cause this is cool. They all must be unopened

    - Open the Mentos and take 3 candies out and stack them on top of eachother. Hold them ready.

    - Open the 2 liter and quickly, QUICKLY, QUICKLY drop all 3 Mentos in the pop. RUN but watch the Pepsi bottle.

    - See how many you can get in the next 2 liter. If you get the right sized funnel you can get a whole pack in at once... Different numbers of Mentos present different results. I'd like to try it with different candies and sodas but haven't gotten around to it.

    [WHY THIS REACTION?]

    The carbonation (bubbles) in the Pepsi rapidly bind to some ingredient in the Mentos which causes extremely quick liquid expansion because of increased gas (carbonation... bubbles).

    Hope I did alright-dighty.

    Yay!

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