We have all experienced bubbles in our day to day lives, whether its blowing bubbles outside on a summer day, seeing bubbles in the soda that you drink, or blowing through your straw. It’s just a thin sphere of liquid enclosing air or some other type of gas, but what is an anti-bubble?
As you might guess, it is basically just the exact opposite of a regular bubble: a thin sphere of air or other gas that encloses a liquid. Surprisingly, you have probably seen these before without having realized it. Want to make some anti-bubbles? Here is a great DIY experiment that you should definitely try at home. All you will need is some dish soap, water, a pipette, food coloring, two cups and maybe some corn syrup to see even cooler results.
Mix some of the dish soap with water in cup #1 without forming suds. In cup #2, make the same mixture and then add some food coloring. With the pipette, take some of the colored mixture from cup #2 and squeeze it into cup #1 without touching the surface of the liquid in cup #1. If you do it slowly you should be able to see spheres of liquid resting on top of the surface and then disappearing quickly. If you squeeze it quickly, the stream of liquid will pull some of the air from above down into the cup, forming an anti-bubble!
To see anti-bubbles in a different way you can use some milk, food coloring, dish soap and a cotton swab. Pour some milk on a plate and drip some food coloring in the middle. With a cotton swab saturated in dish soap, touch the food coloring. You should see an awesome explosion of color from the dish soap repelling from the milk. Now take the cotton swab and gently flick the milk. You might be able to observe some spheres bouncing along the surface. If you did, congratulations, you just made more anti-bubbles!
