You might have made soap bubbles as a kid. They look beautiful but are fragile and pop within seconds. Did you know you can make stronger bubbles that can last longer than your ordinary soap bubbles? You can achieve this just by using a homemade recipe, and the result is more or less similar to plastic bubbles. Plastic bubbles are composed of a plastic polymer; in this simple DIY recipe we use a sugar polymer to accomplish our goal of making unpoppable bubbles. These bubbles are so strong that you can even pick them up!
Ingredients to make unpoppable bubbles :
- Water (3 cups)
- Regular dishwashing liquid (1 cup)
- Light corn syrup (1/2 cup)
- Glycerine (optional)
Follow these steps to make unpoppable bubbles :
- Fill a bowl with 3 cups of water.
- Add 1 cup of the dishwashing liquid and ½ cup of corn syrup in the water. You can also add glycerine, but it is optional.
- Stir the mixture slowly to get an even texture.
- Keep the solution undisturbed for 24 hours so that all the ingredients mix well with each other. The more the resting time, the longer will the bubbles last!
- Blow bubbles using a straw or bubble wand. You can also use a plastic pipette or boba/bubble tea straw to make massive bubbles.
- Dampen your finger or the back of a plastic spoon with the bubble solution before picking up the bubbles. By this trick, you are more likely to easily pick up the bubbles without popping due to the cohesive force of attraction formed between the bubble molecules.
- Alternatively, add corn syrup to an ordinary bubble solution and shake well. The bubble solution prepared by this method would have thicker consistency, and the bubbles can even be blown into larger shapes.
- You can also experiment with different dishwashing liquids and see which one gives the best results. For this, the best proportion of corn syrup or glycerine will depend on the dishwashing liquid you use, so you can adjust the ingredient measurements accordingly.
The science behind the experiment :
Each soap bubble traps some amount of water in the form of a thin layer between the soap molecules. Adding corn syrup to the dish soap solution prevents the bubbles from drying out as well as from bursting. Therefore, when you combine dishwashing liquid and corn syrup, you are basically making a hybrid between an ordinary soap bubble and a sugar polymer bubble. Glycerine, if used, also decreases the rate of evaporation of the water so the bubbles will last longer.
