Quick summary: baking soda/citric acid has a profound effect on a Guar/Charmy mix even when distilled water is used.
This bubble was made with juice that contains baking soda/citric acid. Notice how different the colors are from the picture at right.
Juice without bs/ca. Notice the domination of green/red.
(Note: I plan on an article summarizing the week's explorations with more illustrations and video. These quick notes are being posted while some of the thoughts are fresh in my mind.)
This week, I have spent a brief period each day exploring bubble juice with a Charmy and guar gum base (1000 grams water, 40 grams Charmy, 1.5 ml guar gum powder). Because this combination is so sensitive to the addition of baking soda/citric acid or baking powder, I have wanted to use it to explore some of the issues/questions regarding these additives that have come up during the time during which I have been advocating their use.
Many questions remain, and it is not certain that the results that I am getting are relevant to mixes based on Dawn, Fairy and related detergents. I have never seen as profound an influence on Dawn mixes as I am seeing with the Charmy mixes. It is not clear yet whether this is because of the chemical differences between Charmy and the P&G detergents or if it might be dilution related.
My impression so far is that Charmy is somewhat more dilute than Dawn Pro. It might be the case that the effects I am seeing are only apparent if the dilution approaches the CMC.
Ever since it became generally acknowleged that bs/ca or bp were effective additives (sometime in the past couple of years), there has been occasional discussion as to why. Many theories have been floated.
Two common theories have been that either they act as water softeners or chelating agents. In both of these cases, the effect would be limited to water with mineral content. If either theory were correct then we should not see an effect when distilled water was used.
With my Dawn mixes, the distinct improvement offered by the additives has also been subtle enough that I have never felt comfortable saying definitively that they were responsible for the variations that I saw.
With the Charmy mixes, there is no question. People can look at pictures of the bubbles and tell from the color which mixes have the additives. The mixes without them have the green/red color domination typical of very dilute mixes. The mixes that have the additives have the color spectrum of much thinner soap films that would normally be associated with a higher detergent content.
In today's session, the juice without the additives performed somewhat better than the other non-additive mixes earlier this week. It is not clear whether this was conditions related, normal statistical variation, or due to the distilled water. The mix with the additives did not perform any better than the tap water plus additive mixes.
For more about film thickness, dilution and color see:
Additive Impact[]
Quick summary of the impact that I have seen this week with baking powder or baking soda+citric acid in all sessions:
- Additive mix created substantially longer tubes
- Additive mix achieved many more bubbles per dip with both tri-string wands and small plastic wands
- Additive mix colors indicated a much thinner soap film than the non-additive mix which indicates that the additive mixes had a lower surface tension and thinner resulting soap film
- Additive mixes were generally more bubble friendly.
The mixes with the additives all behaved as if they had much more surfactant than the non-additive mixes.
Questions and Further Explorations[]
- Will sodium citrate have a similar impact?
- Will baking soda on its own have a similar impact?
- Is there a dilution with Dawn Pro that displays a similar profound difference when these additives are used?
- Is the change in pH related to the differences seen?
- Is the additive impact only profound if the dilution approaches the CMC (Critical Micelle Concentration)
Coming Soon - I Hope[]
I am hoping to write up a more rigorous recap of the week's explorations....