40 DAYS' OLD BUBBLE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 16234, 20 May 1916, Page 2 (Supplement)

40 DAYS' OLD BUBBLE.

SCIENTIST WHO BOTTLES THEM. i Two superbly beautiful soap bubbles are' the wonder and admiration of England's most famous scientists at the Royal Institution, says the Daily Express. One,! which was shown in the laboratory, was a venerable and gorgeous specimen, ex- ', actly 40 days old, and the other, which' was on view in the library, was a baby bubble blown only a week old. These two bubbles were blown by Pro- J fessor Sir James Dewar, and the astonishment of the learned scientists who in- i spected them was due to the fact that no one, not even their author, knew they would last so long. They thought the' bubbles would quickly lose their lovelv ] hues, turn black, and' burst. " j | The month-old bubble is the oldest j known bubble in the world. It is about ! lOin in diameter, richly coloured, and is suspended in a glass bottle from the bellshaped end of the tube from which it was blown. ■ i "■ When will the bubble burst?" ; "No human person can say," replied Sir James, who was evidently proud of his ; achievement. "I did not'know of the possibility of keeping a bubble so long. I never dreamt that a bubble could be preserved. We have no knowledge to go upon. We must simply wait and see." The journey which an ordinary bubble makes through ordinary air is' fraught with more risks than a journey for an. ocean liner through a thickly" mined sea. For the air abounds in little particles of dust which may crash through the delicate sides of a bubble as easily as rocks through a ship's keel. Sir James blows his bubbles in filtered and purified air wherein not a speck of dust remains to " mine " the bubble. His bubbles are also encased in glass carboys (bottles protected with basket-work) of wonderful size and delicacy. I The soap used is known as the Plateau.' solution. Plateau, who was a professor in Ghent, was able to keep soap bubbles [*" da or two, but this is the first bubble that has lasted so long as 40 days. How Sir James came to devote attention to bubbles just now in his laboratory at the Royal Institution is explained by the fact that, with lecturersfor the Royal Institution series of lectures—so scarce owing to the war. he revived a lecture on bubbles which he first gave over thirty years ago, and so filled a gap in the lecture programme. As his bubbles, blown on February 17, are in some cases still intact—a record in bubble life— he records their daily changes, his records mav lead to in- i teresting findings on that curious subject, j capillary force. i