Blowing Bubbles

Problem

Does glycerin or corn syrup make bigger bubbles when mixed with Dawn dish soap or Palmolive dish soap?

Conclusion

After experimenting my project, I realized that my hypothesis was correct. I predicted that glycerin and Dawn soap would work the best together and the results said that they were, but I found that corn syrup and Dawn soap had the lowest average which I thought was interesting. I think my experiment was mostly accurate because I tested 3 times with each mixture and got the best answers I could. If I was to do anything different in my project it would be adding more soaps to see which ones worked the best. I would also test more times to make my averages more accurate.

Abstract

For my science fair project I decided to test to see whether Dawn dish soap or Palmolive dish soap works better making bubbles with Glycerin or Corn Syrup. I chose to do this because it seemed interesting and I was interested to see how it worked to make bubbles with ingredients such as these. I predicted the glycerin would work the best with dawn soap. I predicted this because when i was researching the recipes for this project glycerin was most used. I also picked dawn to win against Palmolive because Dawn is highly recommended and very advertised so i thought it would work the best.

I took a pan and poured ¼ of a cup of each soap into each pan. I then it mixed with ⅛ a cup of corn syrup or Glycerin. I tested this with both of my soaps and both Glycerin and Corn Syrup. To make the bubbles i took a straw and stuck it into the mixture in the pan. I then blew until the bubble popped. Sometimes the bubble would pop very very small so I just blew again. When the bubble bursts there was a rim of where the bubble was. I took a ruler and measured the diameter diagonally and horizontally. I used the formula A=pi x R2 to find the area of the bubble. I tested 3 times for each mixture and found an average.

For Palmolive dish soap and corn syrup the average bubble size was 88.84cm. And then for dawn dish soap and corn syrup the bubble size was 76.46cm which is smaller than the bubbles Palmolive made. Then with Glycerin and Palmolive the bubble average was 95.33cm2 . And with Dawn and Glycerin was 105.1cm2. Dawn soap obviously had the better results for Glycerin but not Palmolive. Palmolive had a better average with corn syrup.

I learned how to interestingly make bubbles at home with only a few easy ingredients. My hypothesis ended up being wrong. Palmolive worked a lot better than I ever thought it would. I could have tested each mixture more than just 3 times and found an average of those but overall i think my experiment was accurate.