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Experimentals: The secret chamber of the Anti-Bubble

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Square bubble sits between frame of pipe cleaners
Experimentals: The secret chamber of the Anti-Bubble

SUBJECTS:  Science

YEARS:  3–4, 5–6


Bubble-hunters Doctor Ruby and Bunsen Bernie have to solve just one more challenging bubble test before they can enter the Chamber of the Anti-Bubble.

They have to make a cubic bubble!

This is part two of a two-part episode.


Things to think about

  1. 1.An air bubble, such as you might see in soapy water or blow with bubble mixture, is a sphere of air that's surrounded by a thin film of liquid. An anti-bubble is a ball of liquid surrounded by a thin layer of gas. How might you make an anti-bubble?
  2. 2.Predict what will happen when the cubic bubble frame is dipped into the bubble mixture. Is the bubble in the centre a perfect cube with flat surfaces and straight edges? Watch how Dr Ruby makes the anti-bubble. How is it different from an air bubble?
  3. 3.Surface tension pulls soap film into the smallest possible area. This is why floating bubbles are always spherical. Demonstrate this by making some bubble frames in different two-dimensional shapes such as squares, triangles or star shapes. What happens when you blow a bubble out of each frame? Why?
  4. 4.Sketch what happens to the soap film when Dr Ruby dips his cubic frame into bubble mixture. Predict what would happen with some differently shaped three-dimensional frames (such as rectangular prisms, triangular prisms, pyramids and cylinders). Now test your predictions by making these frames and dipping them in bubble mixture. How can you explain these results?



Date of broadcast: 13 May 2007


Copyright

Metadata © Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Education Services Australia Ltd 2012 (except where otherwise indicated). Digital content © Australian Broadcasting Corporation (except where otherwise indicated). Video © Australian Broadcasting Corporation (except where otherwise indicated). All images copyright their respective owners. Text © Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Education Services Australia is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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