Vegetable oil soap bubbles

So many bubbles from a few spoonfuls of vegetable oil!

Safe­ty pre­cau­tions

Warn­ing! Only un­der adult su­per­vi­sion.

Equip­ment

  • veg­etable oil;
  • al­ka­line drain clean­er;
  • glyc­erol;
  • wa­ter;
  • straw;
  • stove.

Step-by-step in­struc­tions

Mix veg­etable oil, al­ka­line drain clean­er, and glyc­erol. Let sim­mer on the stove for 10 min­utes. Then add wa­ter and pour into a bowl. Blow into the re­sult­ing mix­ture through a straw – a lot of soap bub­bles ap­pear!

Process de­scrip­tion

Al­ka­line drain clean­er con­tains sodi­um hy­drox­ide. When heat­ed, it re­acts with veg­etable oil, and a so-called saponi­fi­ca­tion re­ac­tion takes place. In this case, this forms the sub­stances com­pris­ing soap, which low­er the sur­face ten­sion of the wa­ter. In its turn, glyc­erol re­tains wa­ter mol­e­cules, pre­vent­ing the wa­ter from quick­ly evap­o­rat­ing and mak­ing the walls of the soap bub­bles stronger. Your home­made soap bub­ble mix­ture is ready!

A sim­i­lar ex­per­i­ment is in­clud­ed in the “Nu­tri­ents” set from the MEL Chem­istry sub­scrip­tion.

Try it