Strawberries make surprisingly GIANT bubbles (Best DIY Bubble Recipes)

I appreciate that Ben aka NightHawkInLight now shows his face in his videos. It's a little less creepy than having his videos narrated.

This video shows his findings to make the most durable, long-lasting giant bubbles out of Dawn dish soap, water, salt, baking soda, and J Lube. The titular comment about strawberries is because strawberry DNA is surprisingly easy to extract and highly prevalent within strawberry cells. 

Much of the video - from about 4:15-13:00 - is about Ben's attempts to extract the DNA from strawberries. It's a recreation of a fairly simple and common first year high school biology lab. 

From there, Ben tests his solutions with and without three different polymers - J Lube, strawberry DNA, PEO (polyethylene oxide, poly ox), and no polymer addition.

Then Ben re-tests solutions with an even larger bubble wand made of fishing poles. He does manage to make a few really gorgeous, colossal bubbles - some under lower humidity conditions and again when the humidity is approaching 100%. 

Along the way we do get a whole lot of Ben chuckles, so be prepared for that. 

If ever I want to make huge bubbles, the J Lube would be the recipe I'm looking to use. 

Why Are Soap Bubbles So Colorful?

The wave-particle duality of light is mind boggling to me, though it's not that impressive to most of my students.

The pretty colors of a soap bubble, on the other hand, unite us both in going, 'ooh, pretty."

Student submitted - Saponification

Today's post was submitted by Aleeyah B, one of my AP chemistry students. As a sub assignment after the AP chemistry exam, I had students submit two posts for this blog. I'll be posting them over the next few weeks.

We use soap every day, I hope, but we rarely stop to think about the chemistry of it. This source tells us that soap is made when a fat or oil made of triglycerides (fat found in blood) reacts with a strong base such as sodium hydroxide. This reaction breaks down the triglyceride molecules and makes something called glycerol (a sugar alcohol) and what we call soap. Every soap molecule has two ends, one hydrophilic and one hydrophobic. The hydrophobic end attracts to the oil and grease (non-polar), while the hydrophilic side attracts to the water (polar). As we wash our hands, the soap is able to grab the oil, but is also able to be washed away by the water.

Something that I thought was funny was that soap doesn’t just murder all the germs on your hands, but actually washes them away. I always thought soap instantly killed any bacteria it touched, and not necessarily washed them away.

You can learn more about saponification at this link.

Candy Corn in Space

I will watch just about any video labeled, "in space."

I would watch blobs of water floating in space, shoes drifting away from astronauts, candy corn with a few drops of water.

This video rocks explaining hydrophobic, hydrophillic, surfactants, soap, and mycells.

And they do it all "in space."