Soap Bubbles: a Paradise for Kids and Math Nerds

Soap bubbles are simply irresistible. As is the heading of Section 4.3 of Roberto Piazza‘s book Soft Matter, so I had to borrow it for this post. In the book, you can learn about some of the wonderful physical properties of soap bubbles. For example, I was not aware that each bubble is a double shell enclosing water in between. In this way, the hydrophilic heads of the soap molecules point inside whereas the hydrophobic tails point outside. The colours are then created by interference of light reflected from the two soap films. As water flows and evaporates between the films, colours change depending on the distance between the two films.