One seldom sees grown-ups in public blowing bubbles
One seldom sees grown-ups in public blowing bubbles. It just isn’t done. But if the adult is accompanied by a child then any inhibition they might have had is removed and bubbles, rightly, become the source of giggles and laughter. After all, is there any more delightful toy than an evanescent, seemingly weightless, and multicoloured bubble?
For a time, though, bubbles were not just toys, but the object of serious investigation. Everyone who was anyone worked on them. Think Faraday, Young, Rayleigh. Joseph Plateau, the Belgian physicist who first discovered the persistence of our vision that is essential to the illusion that is cinema, spent many years playing with bubbles and formulated a series of empirical rules that govern their behaviour.
Nowadays, bubbles and foams are everywhere in our lives, from the insulation in our houses and the padding in our shoes, to the froth on our cappuccino, but apart from the odd clown and entertainer there is only one profession that is paid by the bubble: glassblowing. Few chemists today ever get a chance to blow glass, but open any textbook on glassblowing and you’ll read that one of the first hurdles is mastering the art of blowing glass bubbles - a crucial step for making round bottom flasks and any circular openings that make way for junctions and connexions. A classic exercise for an apprentice is to blow a series of identical and equally spaced bubbles along the length of a piece of tubing, a job that takes breath control, steady hands and patience. Fittingly, this fundamental stage in the education of a glassblower is enshrined in a device, the Allihn condenser.