Chemistry is Bubbling Over With Fun

Chemistry is “Bubbling” Over With Fun

Question: Make a prediction of which solution makes better bubbles.

Background Info: We know that soap solution mixed with water creates bubbles. Remember when you were little and you were helping mom with the dishes and the only reason you offered to help in the first place was to be able to play with bubbles. We also previously learned that salt acts as a buffer between the soap and the water. 

Hypothesis: We thought that the sugar would make better bubbles than the salty because it would make the solution thicker and more syrup like.

Materials: a 3 plastic drinking cups

                   a    Liquid dish detergent

                   a    Measuring cup and spoons

                   a    Water

                   a  Table sugar

                   a  Table salt

                   a  Drinking straw

Procedure:

1.   Label 3 drinking cups 1,2,3. Measure and add 1 teaspoon of liquid dish detergent to each cup.  Use measuring cup of water to each drinking cup.  Then swirl the cups to form a clear mixture.

2.   Add ½ teaspoon of table sugar to cup 2 and ½ teaspoon of table salt to cup 3. Swirl each for 1 minute.

3.   Dip straw into cup 1, remove it and blow gently.

4.   Repeat step 3 on cup 2 and 3.

Data

As we mixed the solutions cup 2 was the thickest, coming in second was cup 1 and third place was cup 3.

Once we finished stirring for one minute. Cup 2 with the sugar had more bubbles that had formed during the stirring.

Discussion

 -As we tried to blow bubbles with our straws we came to find that the cup 2 blew bubbles the best, cup 1 the second best, and cup three with the salt didn't blow any bubbles.

 -When we decided we would try to blow bubbles on the surface of the lab counter, once again cup 2 made the strongest bubble.

Apply to Real Life: don't put bath salts in with your bubble bath, because you won't have bubbles.

We learned that salt does not make bubbles you can blow, but it can still make bubbles when agitated.

Some errors that could have occured...

        -We could have had different amount of soap in each cup considering we were using a spoon instead of an exact measuring device.

         -There were different people blowing into the straws trying to create bubbles so that could effect each differently.

Conclusion: we accept our our hypothesis because we were right, salt did affect the solution negatively. We also learned that everything can be investigated deeper so we can learn what causes certain things, like bubbles to reacting differently with salt than with sugar.

Going Further: This could help the productivity of bubble bath and dish soap. Other additional experiment could include testing soap with other common items like dishwasher detergent to see how the soap was affected.