The Bubble Lab

This is the salt mixture. We could only make bubbles by blowing into the cup with the straw.

This is the sugar mixture. It made the best bubbles.

Introduction:

How does table salt and table sugar effect the bubble blowing mixture? This is a lab to test out if perhaps a bit of salt and sugar will cause the normal soap blowing bubbles to either be formed at an easier rater or to see if they can't be effected at all. With a little bit of research, we learned that bubble soap is created with sodium salts of fatty acids and this lead to our hypothesis.

Hypothesis:

We think the table sugar mixture will produce more bubbles than the table salt and the plain liquid dish detergent mixtures. Due to the fact that sugar is sticky the bubbles will be bigger and stronger. Salt on the other hand has sodium and the soap already has sodium in it so when you add more sodium it throws the balance of the mixture off.

 Materials: 

 3 plastic drinking cups, liquid dish detergent, measuring cup and spoons, water, table sugar, table salt, drinking straw.

Procedures:  

1. Label 3 drinking cups 1, 2, and 3. Measure and add one teaspoon of liquid dish detergent to each cup. Use the measuring cup to add two thirds of a cup of water to each drinking cup. Then swirl the cups to form a clear mixture.
2.Add a half teaspoon of table sugar to cup 2 and half a teaspoon of table salt to cup 3. Swirl each cup for one minute.
3. Dip the drinking straw into cup 1, remove it, and blow gently into the straw to make the largest bubble you can. (Please don't suck in with the straw--we don't need people burping up bubbles.) Practice making bubbles until you feel you have reasonable control over your bubble production.
4. Repeat step 3 with the mixtures in cups 2 and 3.

Discussion (Observations):

When we added the correct amount of sugar and salt into the appropriate labeled cups, we noticed changes in the substances immediately. When we stirred up the salt mixture, the water seemed to become misty and a bit foamy upon the surface. When we tried to blow bubbles with this mixture, it didn't work out that well. However, if you blew into the straw with the end in the mixture, bubbles could be formed. While the mixture with no salt nor sugar changed at all, the mixture with the sugar obtained a lighter color and when bubbles were blown with this mixture, the bubbles skin showed in our light purple hues and swirls of mixing blues. It was as if the sugar mixed up is chemical color as well.

Conclusions:

Once we were all done playing around with the soapy mixtures, we came to the conclusion that the salt-soap mixture was the one of which didn't work very well at all. Although it was possible to blow bubbles with it, it overall took too much time. We came to conclusion that, due to the fact that soap is created from sodium salts of fatty acids, since we added more salt to the mixture of the soap, it created an unbalance in the chemical make up of the soap mixture.

The Reason that the soap mixture with sugar lasted longer is because how long a bubble lasts depends on how quickly the surface dries. Glycerin slows down the drying process and that's exactly what sugar is made out of--it allowed the surface to stay wet longer.