Soap bubbles, while delightful, aren’t known for their long lifespans. But with a little trial-and-error, one YouTuber recently set out to dramatically improve both the resiliency and size of each iridescent orb. The results may not technically offer “endless” bubbles, but they are still a major step up from your average summertime creations.
The YouTuber Engineezy has spent years documenting their various creative contraptions online, but his Endless Bubble Machine endeavor is a particularly creative feat of design and problem-solving. After surmising that one of a soap bubble’s main limitations is its source liquid, Engineezy (real name: Jay) theorized that bubble size could exponentially increase through a system that provides a constant flow of necessary ingredients—potentially even leading to an ostensibly neverending bubble.
An initial experiment utilizing a large hand wand, while promising, didn’t allow for him to move fast enough to keep forming the bubble before it popped. The eventual solution, after many design iterations? Strapping a servo- and DC motor-powered, fishing pole-assisted, remote-controlled bubble-making device onto his car.
A quick field trip out to a nearby parking lot showcased the bubble machine’s impressive capabilities. While he never achieved a constant bubble tunnel, Jay did generate extremely large, individual bubbles before popping.
“A bubble is an example of the delicate balance between surface tension of the fluid counteracted by the internal pressure of the bubble’s air,” he explains in his video. “This balance is so precise that even the smallest change can cause the bubbles to burst.”
The likelihood for small changes only increases as the bubbles lengthen, meaning that bursting is essentially inevitable in an uncontrolled environment. Because of this, he concludes that creating an infinitely long bubble is more theoretical than practical, at least without a laboratory-grade vacuum chamber scenario.
[Related: In the blink of an eye, robot sets new Rubik’s cube Guinness World Record.]
Engineezy may not have set a world record for biggest bubble with his estimated 50-foot-long creation—according to Guinness, the record for net-created soap bubble is 28.635-square-meters, or roughly 308-square-feet. That said, he’s “pretty confident” he managed to construct the world’s largest bubble making machine. And while it’s unlikely many others will build a replica of his invention, he did provide let viewers in on a popular concentrate recipe for ensuring gigantic soap bubbles that requires just four easily obtained ingredients:
- 2 cups warm water
- 2 cups Dawn Pro
- 7 grams baking powder
- 4 grams polymer lubricant powder such as J-Lube
Mix all that with two gallons of water, and you should have a concoction ready for all your bubble-blowing needs.