PAM-juice tube. Approximately 30 feet long.
RogerH3 recently posted about promising results with Polyacrylamide (PAM) as a bubble juice polymer. Roger was kind enough to send me a sample of the PAM that he used as I was unable to find water soluble PAM myself.
Tube with the BLM juice
QUICK TAKE: Water-soluble PAM works great. In this quick shootout it compared favorably to BLM . The test was too superficial to draw any conclusions other than PAM is a promising polymer.
CONDITIONS: 8 am, sunny, mild breeze,58F and 80% humidity
WICKS: 48-inch RubberMaid webfoot microfiber top with 2-strand white rayon bottom (from RubberMaid Rayon Finish Mop)
JUICE SUMMARY: Three different 20:1 bubble juice mixes were used (that is (20 parts water to 1 part Dawn Pro). These mixes are pH-adjusted with citric acid to a pH of 7.6. One mix used BLM as its polymer source. The other two used a 0.1% PAM solution as its polymer source. One mix used 10 grams of the PAM solution and the other used 100 grams.
 Bubble-in-Bubble with the BLM juice |
  Bubble-in-bubble with the PAM juice. |
| Bubble-in-bubble was easy to perform with both the BLM-based juice and the "100 gram PAM juice" | |
The "100 gram PAM juice" performed very similarly to the BLM juice. Both juices were conducive to blowing bubbles in bubbles. Both juices could create tubes over 20 feet in these conditions (not optimal for tubes as the wind was a bit too slow). The "10 gram PAM juice" was easy to make bubbles with but bubbles-in-bubbles were hard to achieve. I didn't do extensive tube length comparisons of the 10 gram juice
Both the 100 gram PAM juice and BLM juice could easily get more than 10 bubbles when blowing bubbles with a small plastic wand. The 10 gram PAM juice could easily great bubbles with a small wand but yielded fewer bubbles per dip than the other two.
JUICE DETAILS
- 2018 06 27 BLM solution (20 grams BLM in gallon of juice)
- 2018 09 29 10gr PAM Juice (made last night)
- 2018 09 29 100 gr PAM Juice (made last night)
PAM JUICE DETAILS
- 50 grams Dawn Pro (pre-2016)
- 7 grams 5% citric acid solution
- tap water
- .1% PAM Solution (1 gram PAM dissolved in 999 grams tap water)
"10 gr PAM Juice": 10 grams 0.1% PAM solution + 983 grams tap water
"100 gr PAM Juice": 100 grams 0.1% PAM solution + 893 grams tap water
A nice bubble with the 100 gram PAM Juice
Nice tube with the BLM-based juice.
A NOTE ABOUT ACQUIRING PAM: We are not quite sure what product you need to order to get water-soluble PAM. Roger and I received different PAM versions (his water soluble, mine insoluble) when ordering the same product. For the time being, I'd recommend not ordering any unless you can confirm from the supplier that it is water soluble.