Bubble Prints

Objectives

• Make a bubble and understand its structure.

Materials

• Per Bubble Colour Station:
  water
  dish soap
  food colouring
  small bowl, plate or cake tin
  newspapers to cover desks under Colour Stations

  Teacher Tip: we recommend 4–6 Colour Stations per Class

• Per Student:
  1 straw
  1 white construction paper or card for printing

Key Questions

• What patterns do you notice in your bubble print?

What To Do

Preparation

1. Cover tables you’ll be using with old newspapers.
2. Mix a few drops of dish soap with water in each bowl.
3. Add food colouring—you’ll need a lot to make the bubble print bright.

Activity

1. Using a straw, blow bubbles into the coloured bubble mixture until the bubbles form a structure above the rim.
   
2. Lay a sheet of white paper across the rim, and lift the paper off after a second or two. The bubbles popping against the paper creates a pattern.
3. Repeat with other colours.
4. Let the paper dry.
   

Tip: If the bubbles pop too quickly, add a few tablespoons of sugar to the mixture.

Extensions

• Students can also use their straws to blow bubbles directly onto the paper. The paper can either be flat on the table, or taped to a wall/easel, with newspaper on the floor underneath.
• Bubble solution tinted with food colouring or paint will be colourful, but when you blow a bubble, the colour won’t show because the bubble contains very little water. To create a brightly-coloured, free-floating bubble, dye molecules must bond to the soap molecules.
• Explore and compare Crayola® coloured bubbles and Zubbles®, bubble solutions that use this kind of dye and compare them to the bubbles you made with food colouring.