Soap bubble artist here, trying to understand the science better. Surface tension helps to hold soap bubbles together. Great news for me. But, I think it is also the reason that if two soap bubbles get close enough together, they merge into one bubble. Now, I want to get my bubbles as close to each other as possible without merging into one bubble. Do I need to reduce the surface tension on my liquid and, if so, any ideas how can I manage to do this?
[Physics] How to reduce the surface tension of bubble liquid
surface-tension
Related Solutions
OK, here is a complicated and clear explanation of what you are asking, which is also new to me: Soap is a complicated chemically molecule it breaks the high surface tension to allow bubbles, and also once in the air part of it protects the bubble from evaporation.
So it is an interplay between two components: surface tension and, as Georg points out,amphiphilic effects . It is not just the lower surface tension that creates bubbles, so for the other liquids you list an additive should be found that would work the same way soap works for water, not allowing evaporation.
Beautiful article (great graphics - not sure if they are photos or GCI) at http://math.berkeley.edu/~hutching/pub/bubbles.html - not sure if this addresses "your" kind of bubbles, but worth a look anyway. In general surface tension prevents bubbles from becoming a single larger bubble as there is an intermediate phase when the surface would have to be bigger. Instead they will try to share an interface (surface smaller) and that interface will be curved depending on their relative sizes (the smaller bubble is stronger and pushes the interface to the larger bubble). See the math in linked papers at the above link.
Preview from the above:
Best Answer
Simply heat the solution or liquid which will increase its temperature and hence will reduce its surface tension further also reduces it viscousity .Actually the reason behind it is that when the tempertaure is increased, the kinetic energy of the molecules increases producing more random motion of the particles. So the open surface of the liquid experience less downward force due to randomness of the particles inside and hence it reduces the Surface Tension.Thats it, So easy and Simple.
Thanks