March 2012 -- High Dilution Explorations[]
A pretty big bubble created with 50:1 water:dawn pro solution (0.02% WSR301)
In March, several of us began a discussion of water:detergent dilution on the wiki's facebook page. I have, from the beginning of my interest in soap bubbles a few years ago, been curious about the huge range of dilutions in the recipes that one finds. I settled on about 12.5:1 which seems to be in the range most frequently documented by SBF members.
40 to 1 Dawn Pro and WSR301 Solution (ph-adjusted)
Over the last few years, I have asked on SBF many times about how people arrived at their preferred dilution and what differences they observed at greater and lesser dilution, but I never got any replies. On the FB page, a couple of people noted that they preferred dilutions over 20:1 because they found the colors to be better.
In the conversation, one person mentioned that for a while they were using 40:1 but had since switched to somewhere in the 20's because it was more friendly. This got us to wondering -- how dilute we could get and still have a viable solution.
What we found was that with Dawn Pro and the European Fairies that 40:1 and 50:1 could be quite friendly (i.e. bubbles were easy to close and bubble-in-bubble was not hard) as long as you added enough PEO. (We were only exploring PEO-based mixes). At those dilutions, you need a lot more PEO than with less-dilute solutions. And yet, the mixes are not gooey/stringy the way that less-dilute mixes are with even half as much PEO. (Perhaps, there are interactions with the detergent polymers in less-dilute mixes that are not significant at higher dilution).
In any case, dilute mixes (40:1 to 50:1 with Dawn Pro and Fairy) have distinct color profiles. These mixes won't create tubes as long as one can create with less-dilute mixes, but you get these gorgeous pink/green dominated bubbles that are quite beautiful. I recommend that anyone serious about bubbles explore this area.
We have yet to explore HEC or guar-based mixes at this dilution.
Visit the wiki's facebook page photo albums for examples of these bubbles.
I'll get some videos up one of these days. Leave a comment if you are curious about the videos.
Perspective - May 2017[]
I just realized that I never added photo and video links to this entry. I have added some just now. Just recently, I have realized that these explorations which was in many ways a collaboration between a few of us "beginners" have had a big impact on the larger community. At the time that I originally wrote the blog post, most bubbleheads were using dilutions in the range of 8:1 to 14:1. 16:1 was considered dilute. Anything more dilute than that was considered a real outlier. Nowadays, things are very different. These days few experienced bubblers use dilutions less than 16:1 for giants except for special occasions.
These explorations also led to realization of the might impact of pH adjustment -- though the full realization didn't happen until the later explorations with the Japan's Charmy Power of Suds -- since Charmy juice changes even more dramatically than Dawn/Fairy when pH adjusted.
Dilutions. These dilution numbers apply only to the normal concentration versions of Dawn Pro and Fairy and the related detergents. Some versions of Dawn (such as Simply Clean) and Fairy have about half as much surfactant as the 'standard'. See the Detergent article.
Photos and Video[]
Video[]
2012 03 26 40 1 Bubble-in-Bubble
2012 03 26 a few 40 1 bubbles
2012 03 23 dilute explorations session 2
2012 03 23 50 1 Dawn Pro, 0.02% WSR301
A 50:1 dilution!
Photos[]
50 to 1
