What is/are the properties of a liquid (e.g. viscosity, surface tension) which is conducive to formation of stable bubbles floating in air (not the bubble inside the liquid)? E.g., if soap dissolved water is bubbled through a straw, big-small air bubbles are formed which comes out of the liquid and keep floating in the air.
Edit:
This Wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_tension#Surfactants) attributes this to low surface tension of the liquid, but I can enumerate several liquids like spirit, petrol which have quite low surface tension, still if you blow through a straw into it, you won't get bubbles.
Best Answer
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.