Soap Bubble Wiki

PEO and soap hate each other?

Wayneschmidt


I've been experimenting with varying J-lube and soap concentrations and discovered they appear to have an antagonistic relationship. High J-lube and low soap concentrates work, low J-lube and high soap concentrations work, but when I try high J-lube and high soap concentrations the bubbles don't last as long.

Gbsoap peo effects

Have you seen this relationship before?

Thank you.

Wayne Schmidt.


Espiegel123


To give a more informed response, some additional information would be helpful.

Do you mean 3 teaspoons of J-Lube or 3 teaspoons of PEO?

What size bubbles were these?

How were they created?

What was the environment and temperature humidity?

How many bubbles did you create with each mix?

Did you use any baking powder or baking soda/citric acid?

As an fyi, 16:1 is not very dilute for Dawn Ultra. Longevity will generally be hurt by increasing the concentration much beyond that. If you have not read the Dilution article or Color and Film Thickness, you might find them worth reading. PEO helps with bubble-friendliness and self-healing but does not influence longevity except that when you use too much, bubbles are adversely affected.

Let me know the answers and we can go from there.



I meant 3 teaspoons of J-lube.

The bubbles averaged 5 feet in diameter and 7 feet long.

They were made using s 6-foot tri-string wand using 3/8-inch diameter braided cotton rope with the core removed.

My location is in the high desert: 2400 foot altitude, 20-percent humidity, 65-degrees, mostly bright sunny skies.

I made 20 bubbles with each mix, video taped them then measured their duration with a stopwatch during playback.

These solutions did not have any baking powder or Baking soda/citric acid. Several earlier baking powder experiments showed little to no improvement in lifetime in my area.

I have read both the articles you mentioned as well as many other on this wiki.

I'm very new to large bubble blowing, having only started three weeks ago.

Espiegel123


A few things. Before you can draw any conclusions about this or other experiments, you need to perform them on a number of occasions in both similar and different conditions.

Did you mix up solutions at these different concentrations or adjust them in the field? (Important to know).

As I mentioned earlier, PEO never extends bubble life. When there is too much though, it can hurt the bubbles.

If you want to extend bubble life, you should be looking at lower soap concentrations for the reasons discussed elsewhere. I often use dilutions around 30:1 when humidity is so low. You should also look again at baking powder (or baking soda/citric acid). It makes quite a difference as long s you add them to the fully diluted mix.

The difference between 3 seconds and 4 seconds seems fairly small despite being 25% apart. Large bubbles outdoors are subject to quite variable conditions. If you compared identical solutions, you might find similar differences in s sample size that small. It is worth noting that your lowest PEO dose in your trials is already pretty high. I am surprised that the higher doses did that well.

Best,

Edward



Wayneschmidt


Thank you for your reply, Edward.

I mixed all the solutions the same way the night before and let them rest at least 14 hours. They are made from scratch, not from premixed concentrates.

In my area the recipe that works the best is one I believe is associated with Keith Johnson: 18 cups water, 2 cups Dawn Ultra, 1/2 cup Dawn Pot and Pan, 1/4 cup glycerine, 4.25 ounces of Surgilube and 1/2 teaspoon of J-lube. Bubbles using this recipe lasted an average of 5 seconds. If the J-lube is increased to 1 teaspoon, the bubbles average 7 seconds.

I'm documenting all my experiments on a webpage at http://www.waynesthisandthat.com/giant bubbles.htm.

I'll try some 30/1 mixes and see how they work. Thanks for the suggestion.

Wayne.



Espiegel123


I wouldn't just do 30:1. I would try 20:1 and 25:1, and 35:1 too. For the reasons explained in the dilution article and Critical Micelle Concentration article, there is a much smaller difference in soap films with a 16:1 and 8:1 mix than there will be between 16:1 and 20:1. As you move from 16:1 to 20:1 to 25:1 to 30:1 to 35:1 -- if you video somewhere where you can accurately evaluate the color -- you will see differences much more significant than exploring the 8:1 to 16:1 range.

Adjusting the pH (i.e. using baking powder or baking soda+citric acid) will probably make more of a difference in more dilute solutions -- although the difference is not going to be so much longevity as things like strength and bubblefriendliness.

I also recommend using a better detergent. I think that you will find Dawn Pro or Dawn Manual Pot and Pan quite a bit better. Dawn PowerClean also seems to be quite a bit better than Dawn Ultra.

I'd have to say that the difference between 5 and 7 seconds -- unless you have a device to ensure that the wands are open for the exact same amount of time and that the sizes are precisely the same are not significant and could quite possibly be due to factors not directly related to one being better than the other. If the average of one was 10 seconds and the the other five over multiple sessions, I would consider that signficant.

I should say that I have not used Dawn Ultra extensively since finding that Dawn Pro and Manual Pot and Pan worked so much better -- in subtle but distinct ways. Btw, I don't beieve (I could be wrong) that Keith ever recommended Dawn Ultra. I suspect he recommended a mix of Dawn NON-Ultra (which ha been unavailable for a few years) and Dawn Pot and Pan.

You might also want to find some cord that is not so thick. 3/8" is very thick. Before I switched to the mop yarns that I recomend, I found that 3/16" diamond braid was preferable to anything thicker-- that is personal preference but you might try it.

I am very curious to hear about your results.


Wayneschmidt


You're right about Mr. Johnson's recipe calling for non-ultra Dawn. I checked my references and discovered that the site with his recipe was someone else's. I assume they incorrectly reported it. I'll make the change. Sources directly from him, such as his YouTube video, calls for non-ultra Dawn.

Ignoring for the moment the type of soap used, Keith Johnson's formula works out to around 8/1. This seems very rich in comparison to the much more dilute solutions recommended in this Wiki. Why is that?

I tried his recipe using only Dawn Pot an Pan, but did not measure any improvement over mostly Dawn.

After completing this morning's tests, I diluted one of the recipes from 7.2/1 to 21/1 as Edward suggested and it increased the average lifetime by 30-percent. This was a quick-and-dirty test but showed enough promise to pursue high dilution formulas.

Thanks again for all the help.



Espiegel123


Hi Wayne,

I think you will find the answers about dilution ranges if you dig a bit here on the wiki -- you will find some blog entries from when I first started exploring more dilute solutions -- and many discussions about this on SBF, the Soap Bubble Fanciers Yahoo Group. Long-story short, years ago Keith found a recipe that worked pretty well -- and people just went with it. When they experimented with dilution they did not realize how surfactants work (i.e. that when the concentration is above the CMC that changes in the amount of soap have relatively little impact on surface tension and soap film thickness).

I was in that boat. When I experimented with dilution initially it was in the range 6:1 to 16:1 focused on the region around 12:1 because, at that time, that is what the most credible bubblers were using.

For years, I had asked people how they decided what dilution was best -- and never got a reasonable answer. A few years back, a few friends of mine that have a bubble workgroup noticed that a guy had submitted a recipe on the wiki at 40:1. We ignored it assuming that he was a newbie submitting a crazy recipe. That guy became part of the workgroup -- and though he no longer used 40:1, he mentioned that the colors were different. So, we decided to see how dilute we could make our juice and have it still work.

With Dawn Pro, I found that solutions could work well at up to about 50:1 with the amount of polymer adjusted. Thommy noticed that those bubbles were colored dramatically differently with colors indicating a very thick soap film. After talking to some chemists, we realized that most people (including experienced bubblers) mistakenly think that more soap means thicker soap film -- when in fact more soap means THINNER films (although as you get above the CMC they don't get much thinner -- but the excess soap does increase the likelihood extremely thin spots as the film expands).

Anyway, that started many of us working to explore the relationship between dilution and various factors.

8:1 worked and the range of 8:1 - 13 or 14:1 became the average working range. Since, I started writing about my findings and the guar gum and eGoo recipes became popular, that range has changed. Some people still use dilutions under 16:1 but fewer and fewer do. If you explore the amazing colors, you will see why -- even without the benefit of improved longevity in some conditions.

By the way, the difference between Dawn Pro and Dawn Ultra will become more obvious to you with experience -- and possibly may require a better wick. You will find the same with adjusting the pH. Until we published our findings, most people (including ourselves) did not adjust the pH -- but under many conditions the difference is profound though subtle. It isn't primarily a longevity issue.

You might find it worthwhile to read the blogs in order -- to see where things started and where they are now.

By the way, the longevity will probably improve significantly well above 21:1. Don't just dilute the juice, though. The amount of polymer is critical. I think of bubble juice as a water:polymer mix to which detergent is added. As you get more dilute, you may need a larger polymer concentration than at lower dilutions.

And, seriously, give another try to baking powder or baking soda/citric acid -- remembering that all the water needs to be present for them to make a difference. Perhaps Dawn Ultra is not improved so much -- but Dawn Por/Manual Pot and Pan or PowerClean mixes are improved according to reports from a wide range of bubblers (many with much more experience than I).



Wayneschmidt


Today was a marathon testing day. I got through a matrix of 12 solutions: 20/1 water to Dawn Pot and Pan, 25/1, 30/1 and 35/1 each at three different amounts of J-lube: 1/2 packed teaspoon (1.6 grams) per gallon, 1 teaspoon and 1.5 teaspoons. The temperature was 55 degrees, the humidity 20-percent, clear, calm and sunny. I was very careful when mixing the batches to make sure each was prepared in the same order and with the same amount and type of blending. The solutions rested for 14 hours before use. The bubbles averaged 6 feet in diameter.

The solution that provided the longest lifetime (6.2 seconds) and the greatest percentage of successful closures (90-percent) was the 20/1 mixture with 1 packed teaspoon (3.2 grams) of J-lube.

My next test is to see what effect adding Baking Powder has.


Wayneschmidt


Correction: Instead of jumping right in on the baking powder experiments, I'm going to repeat today's test. That will give an idea of what sort of errors bars with which I'm dealing. I'm not completely comfortable about it because the additional 24 hours of resting could change the bubble solutions, introducing another variable. Still, I believe it's a good idea.

Wish me luck.



Espiegel123


Good luck. I am very curious to follow your testing. By the way, you can simply add baking powder to the solutions after you have done a round of testing. The baking powder you use does make a difference. Calumet/Clabber Girl/Rumford all work quite well. You will notice them immediately react with the liquid (giving of the CO2 responsible for the benefit). Some baking powder (such as the Whole Foods house brand) do not react very vigorously at room temperature and so are not as effective (they can be effective but you need to add a lot more).

Hopefully, you are set up so that you can observe the colors well -- if not you will miss out on getting some important metrics. If you haven't taken a look at the blog entries from the past summer/fall about the influence of pH....take a look at them.

Keep in mind that with the pH adjustment, there are some hard to quantify properties that seem influenced that might not show up if strictly measuring longevity. The success rate in closing bubbles is influenced. With good lighting conditions, a comparison of bubbles made with and without baking powder (at a given dilution) should be quite apparent. (Take a look at the related articles, if you are not sure what I am talking about). There is a blog entry showing the longevity test with 6 solutions juxtaposed that may give you some idea. (Sorry not to be providing links, but I am a bit pressed for time).

In any case, it only takes a few minutes for the baking powder to have its effect with decently active baking powder.

I just took a look at your page. I have a couple of notes.

) you are getting great results given the humidity. you might want to experiment with your camera angle to see if you can find an angle where the bubble color is stronger as that color info will provide a lot of information.

) am i correct in assuming that when you are judging the longevity that you are not counting the bubbles that make contact with the ground?

) i would recommend making some more loops so that you don't rely on rinsing. Detergent builds up in the wick over time (most wicks seem to release the water more easily than the detergent) and when you change dilutions it takes many dips to clear the old dilution. This is easy to see if you test two very different dilutions with lighting that allows the bubble's colors (indicators of film thickness) to show clearly. This is especially true if you move from lower to higher dilutions. It can take many dips for that extra soap to get out of the wick. This is especially true of wicks that hold a lot of bubble juice. If you decide to use only one wick, you should make sure that you change the order of the juice and test on different days -- to be sure that the progression itself is not influencing your results. Also, if you are rinsing wicks, make sure that you wet the wick and rinse it before the first trial if you are not already doing that.

2) It sounds like you may have cast the guar recipe without exploring different dilutions. I would recommend doing that after you find your optimal J-Lube solution. The optimal dilution is partly influenced by the release characteristics of the wick and may be different for different polymers. Also, many of us have found that two different juices may work differently relative to each other on different days -- probably due to non-obvious environmental factors. I often have a couple of different juices with me. You might find that something in the 16:1 to 22:1 range works more to your liking than the version you tried. I will be updating the guar recipe to be more explicit about adjusting dilution.

Great work you are doing! I appreciate it very much.




Wayneschmidt


Although conditions were identical today to yesterday, the tests produced radically different results. Yesterdays winners were, for the most part, today's losers. Because there is no pattern to the changes, I doubt this was caused by the solutions aging an additional 24 hours.

Please believe me when I say I incorporate many more restrictions on how I create bubbles than I have mentioned to date, all intended to produce as consistent results as possible. Yet it's painfully obvious that I have to develop a new methodology for making quantitative comparisons.

To answer your questions: (1) My camera angle is fixed. If I use any other orientation the bubbles will have bright white backgrounds, which will wash out the colors. (2) I run the wick through a hot-water wash cycle after each set of tests. (3) If a bubble pops because it touches something, I discard it from the calculations. (4) My experiences confirm your comment that I may have given up on guar recipes too soon. If and when I can nail down a consistent methodology for making quantitative comparisons I will revisit it.

Weather permitting, tomorrow's tests will be much simpler. I'm going to mix up a large batch of the 20/1 - 1 tsp J-lube recipe that worked so well yesterday and blow 100 bubbles with it. I'll analyze the video to see if there is any pattern to why some bubbles last longer than others, how many bubbles it takes to establish a representative number for longevity and examine my technique to see if something I'm doing is affecting bubble longevity.

I'm not a chemist or physicist, nor am I knowledgeable or experienced with bubble blowing. I accept that it's doubtful that I'll ever develop a bubble solution that is in anyway remarkable. But, if I can figure out some technique for making measurable comparisons between bubble solutions or wicks or whatever, I'll feel that I may have made a contribution.


Espiegel123


Wayne: I'd encourage you to blog these over here on the wiki with the photos and the videos, too. It might facilitate discussion of the various results. Don't be discouraged. And, all the questions, are to help put the results in the right context. Documenting every detail is hard/impossible, and sometimes, things that weren't mentioned are important for understanding what is going on.

If you have not seen the How_to_evaluate_your_bubble_mix article, I think it is worth a look.

One thing that is important to understand is that given the complex system that a freefloating bubble is (a soap film by itself is already pretty complicated), you need to adjust your expectation of variance accordingly. You are seeing something that you will see mentioned over and over here on the wiki and in my posts in {{SBF)) that many people tend to ignore: there is so much variance that you should not draw conclusions from a few trials no matter how well done those trials are. Take one juice and go out and do 20 bubbles. Take the same juice out on a day that looks to have the same conditions and do 20 bubbles. You may see a lot of variation. And within one session, you may see a lot of variation. With those variations come the possibility that what looks like 'a better juice' may just be due to normal random variation. Keep in mind that randomnes is not equally distributed. If you flip a coin 20 times, you won't see a simple alternation of heads-and-tails You will see some long runs of heads or tails. That is a system with just two states.

That is why, I remind people that you need to do many trials under the same AND different conditions and see if the same patterns emerge over and over, or if, as they often do, they vary.

When bubbles are shortlived, it can be tempting to look at a longevity of 5 seconds as a 25% improvement on 4 seconds. It MIGHT be. But it might also just be natural variation. I, personally, would be hesitant to assign such small differences in an uncontrolled environment meaningful.

Even with conclusions based on multiple trials, I don't give much credence to them unless they hold up over time and for other people. Sometimes, we are measuring our own personal affinity for a particular mix. Hang in there. The patterns will emerge.

On to some thoughts about your previous reply.

To get the best information, try to set up everything so that you cn see the colors as clearly as in the images on Color_and_Film_Thickness if you can. It can take some experimentation to find the exact right camera position and time of day. In my location, moving the camera a few feet can make a big difference.

I think you may have misunderstood my comment about the importance of getting the juice out between trials. I don't mean just that you need to get out the day's juice, I mean that when you move your loop from one solution to another that it will take many bubbles before you are testing the new solution. If you use the same loop in dilution A and dilution B, it can easily take 10 dips (even if you rinse the loop) to get the old juice out. It might take even more if you move from a high concentration mix to a lower one.

If you do choose to use the same loop, you need to treat the loop before the first dip of the day in the same way as you do between dips -- otherwise that first set of trials on the day will be with significantly different conditions. I.e. if you rinse between juices, you should start by soaking your loop in a different solution and then rinse as you do between trials. It is usually easier just to use multiple loops. I had been testing for a while before I realized that some of my early results were not as valid as I had thought because I did not realize how hard it was to get a loop flushed of a solution.

I would also recommend testing with a smaller loop. 72" is very large. The larger the bubbles are, the more subject they are too all sorts of influences. With a smaller loop (something in the 32" to 50" range), you can still make very large bubbles and you may find the results more stable unless your only interested is supergiant bubbles. The larger the bubble, the more variance that there tends to be.

With such large bubbles, I would strongly recommend longer handles. It is amazing how much difference getting the bubbles a few feet higher can make.



Wayneschmidt


Reviewing earlier videos of my bubble blowing showed I was inconsistent in how long I let the wand drain before creating the bubble. In the more viscous solutions I used at first this wasn't as much of an issue. But when I started experimenting with 20/1 solutions, their lower viscosity meant they drained much faster so a few seconds difference had a much greater effect. After several tests I found that with 20/1 water to Dawn Pot and Pan, 1 teaspoon J-lube per gallon and 2 teaspoons baking powder per gallon the optimal drain time was 15 seconds. More or less than this and the bubble duration became very inconsistent. At 15 seconds I could reliably pump out bubbles that lasted until they hit the ground, typically 16 seconds. Unfortunately the air today was so calm there was no loft available to keep them in the air. Here's the URL of a video showing how they did as well as demonstrating how consistent I am at producing the same size bubbles for these tests: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyDnsPUZKh8. It's very repetitious, but I made it as a record, not for entertainment, though a few of the clips are somewhat attractive. I'm six feet tall so you can see I'm pretty good at making bubbles that are consistently 5-feet in diameter. Most that look larger or smaller appear so because they are closer or farther away from the camera.

Tomorrow's test will be to repeat this one to verify the results and also see how leaving the baking powder out affects longevity.



Espiegel123


Thanks for the posting. (And please do consider using blog entries to update with your progress and conclusions -- other visitors are much more likely to find the posts -- and we can assign tags to the posts so that the will also show up when people look at related categories.)

I can see the colors much better in this video than I did in the earlier one that I saw.

The new video shows good consistency. And that was a valuable observation about the drip time. I am not convinced that these are 5-foot diameter bubbles -- not that it really matters -- if I compare the bubble by taking a measurement where you start out standing to get a sense of what 6-feet is and then compare the bubble (which more or less appears where you were standing), they look closer to 4-feet in diameter although they may for a brief time be 5 feet in one dimension and narrower in another. That is a good test size. I could be wrong -- and it does not really matter. Consistency is what is important.

I would recommend at some point (knowing what you know now) re-evaluating the Rubbermaid finish mop yarn. I would not use any more than full-ply. I personally prefer a full-ply (that is the normal yarn) top-string and a bottom string that is one or two deconstructed strands. All of the super-giants that you see pictured on my site were made with a setup like that.

I am very curious to see how your next round of tests go.

Btw, I notice that you mention Keith's old formula. You can see his thoughts about the eGoo recipe here. I need to update the eGoo page to describe more about some of the variations. The key thing is that for some wicks a bit more soap added after diluting can be useful. And, it is important, that pH adjusters be added after dilution. I tried to capture that in the article -- but it is not as clearly presented as it should.




Wayneschmidt


Today was a good day. The first thing I noticed is that the humidity had skyrocketed to a steamy 23-percent. (Joy! Rapture!)

The night before I had mixed a large batch of 20/1 water to Dawn Pot and Pan and 1 teaspoon of J-lube per gallon. After mixing, I divided it in half and added the equivalent of 2 teaspoons of baking powder per gallon to one. My early experiments with high soap concentration solutions showed little effect. I was looking forward to seeing what happened with a lower soap concentration.

The tests went very well. All the bubbles in each solution performed consistently and the results were substantial enough to be meaningful.

The solution without the baking powder produced 30 bubbles that lasted an average of 6.5 seconds. 73-percent of the attempts produced bubbles that closed.

The solution with baking powder produced 32 bubbles that lasted an average of 11.1 seconds and had a closure rate of 94-percent.

Based on these results and confirmation by posts by many others in this forum I'm going to use baking powder from now on.

My next work is to improve the wick material in my tri-string wand. The 3/8-inch braided cotton rope works very good but weighs a ton, well... actually only 12 ounces fully loaded but at the end of a 10-foot wand it feels like a ton. Even with counterweights it's a strain.

More importantly, as I've read on this forum I need to get more material in the top string and less in the bottom to avoid the "heavy belly" syndrome where there's so much solution in the bottom of the bubbles it drags it down to the ground.

After the baking powder tests I played around wicks of 3/16-cotton rope, full thickness mop yarn and, following a recommendation in the "wicks" article, some super-bulky acrylic yarn. Although I've read many people extoling the virtues of the Rubbermaid mop yarn, it didn't work as well as the others for me. The acrylic yarn worked very well. It held a lot of solution and released it easily. The biggest problem is that after a few bubbles the wick began winding around itself when the bubble was closed off. It was difficult to open the wand for the next bubble. Have you heard of this winding-up problem and if so, do you know how to prevent it? It doesn't happen with the mop yarn.

So, tomorrow's test is going to compare several different wick materials and see which works the best for me.

And by the way, thank you very much for sticking with a newcomer and taking the time to help so much. Without your suggestions I'd still be drowning in 7/1 bubble solutions.



Wayneschmidt


I forgot to ask: How do I start a blog entry as you suggested and then transfer all this information into it?



Espiegel123


Great to hear about the progress -- and that your results are consistent with wat we have seen. I am a little curious about the results with the finish mop yarn.

Did you do any pre-treatment (such as washing in a washing machine) before using it?

How many sessions have you used it on?

If you didn't wash it in a washing machine, you may need to do that. It may also take a few sessions to "break in".

I actually prefer the Rubbermaid Webfoot microfiber mop yarn (completely unlike other microfiber mops, btw) but it is hard to find and I find the rayon mop yarn very close.

This is actual rubbermaid brand and not a knock off?

Another material that I like a lot is the cooking twine at Bed, Bath and Beyond and soda-washing it. Some people like a 3 or 4 strand braid as a top-string. You will find instructions here on the wiki about how to make twisted cord easily. The soda-washing is an important factor.

I don't use the twine for top-strings usually because I like the mop yarn, but many do.

Lately, I mostly use twine for my bottom strings. All of the bubbles on the bubble of the day page were made with a mop yarn (one fully ply length) for the top and a single soda-washed twine strand for the bottom.