Soap Bubble Wiki
Soap Bubble Wiki

Now that it looks like Non-Ultra Dawn may really be disappearing for good -- it still shows up on P&G's e-store but reports from around the country are that it is being replaced on store shelves by something called Non-Concentrated Dawn. Unlike both the currently available Non-Ultra and the currently available (in the SF Bay Area) Non-Concentrated Dawn, the word 'Classic' does not appear on the label. Perhaps, this is the same as the Non-Concentrated Classic Dawn with which I am familiar or perhaps Non-Ultra is just undergoing a name change. Or...?

In any case, for a long time I have wanted to have a way to calibrate the relative strength/concentration of a detergent in order to better figure out how to substitute one detergent for another in a recipe.

I have tried a number of methods in the past:

  • Dehydrating detergent -- which says something about how much "stuff" there is but that stuff doesn't really tell us much about how well that stuff makes bubbles
  • Diluting down detergent until it can't make a bubble with the longevity test apparatus. That gives clues but it is so time-consuming to perform that it is not worth the hassle. It also has the drawback of being very probabilistic. There isn't a well-defined dilution at which it just stops being able to make the bubble.

Tonight, I tried another method inspired by something that another bubbler mentioned. I decided to make a very dilute solution and blow into it with a straw and measure how high the bubbles were after 30 seconds. So, I decided to experiment with dilutions to see what dilution would be a good one to test. I was finding that even with only 0.1 grams of Non-Concentrated Classic Dawn and 100 grams water (yes 1000 to 1 ratio) that the foam rose to the top of the glass. At 2000 to 1, the foam would only rise an inch. But with Dawn Pro Manual Pot & Pan, at 2000 to 1, the foam easily rose to the top of the glass.

Somewhere in here, there is a usable quantifiable test.

Maybe, someone knows something simple that I am overlooking -- if so, I'd love to know what it is.