Science Marches On!

[oakenguy]

If you're like me, then you've frequently asked yourself, "When are they going to come up with unbreakable soap bubbles?" I'm afraid the answer is, not quite yet.

Sitting beside me on the desk is a product called "Touchabubbles", which bills itself as 'The Scientific Breakthrough that Doesn't Break!' (heh). It promises bubbles that 'magically harden when they contact they air', so that you can have hours of fun 'catching them, stacking them, or watching them roll along the floor'. It goes without saying that I HAD to have this.

Here are the drawbacks I noticed in my experiments with Touchabubbles (with the office door closed, thankyewverymuch). I'll take the selling points in reverse order.

"Watch them roll along the floor"....unless you have carpets, or little grains of dust, at which point they will stick and remain stuck until they deflate;

"Stack them"...if you can catch them in your hand before they hit the floor and they happen to connect with another bubble. Once they've landed, any attempt to lift them up using fingers, a pencil, chopsticks, a thin piece of cardboard and/or blowing on them causes deflation. I don't think "stack" is the right word to use; possibly "facilitate the midair collision" comes closer.

"Catching them"...here's the fun part. They hang in midair a *long* time, and it is possible to get a nice collection in your hand (or to spin around in the middle of the cloud, get covered in them, and burble "Lookit me, I'm a pretty Christmas tree!" ((Not that I did this. No.)) ) .

The drawback is that they *do* deflate, and when they do they leave a little 'skin' behind. No, really, it looks like dead skin, the sort you peel off in long strips when you're sunburned. Which means that a minute or two after catching a handful of bubbles and watching them deflate, you look like an extra from the last five minutes of the special uncut edition of "Dr. Strangelove", if you know what I mean. Or maybe "CHUD".

So there you go--it's sort of nifty, but hardly a fog-ring-blowing smoke gun.

Comments

[amare.livejournal.com]

heh, I've seen those, I haven't ever seen them for sale but I've had them float at me from unknown sources. The perversity of a bubble that is sticky but will not pop disturbed me when I was randomly confronted by them especially since there was no obvious orrigionation point (how was I to know it wasn't toxic waste or something!). I like my bubbles to pop thank you very much otherwise what's the fun and challenge in blowing a big bubble and trying to keep it from hitting anything by blowing on it? Besides, the bubbles you can make with that stuff are pretty small aren't they? Have you seen that gummy stuff that comes in a tube and you blow bubbles with the attatched straw? It comes in various colors and smells really bad until it dries, which it does as soon as you blow it up. I wish I had a product name to pass along but it's been years since I played with it.

[malinaldarose.livejournal.com]

Hah. You know what? I can't remember the name of it, either, but the SKU was 1826 and it was 33 cents....

Arg! Toy store flash back! Arg!

[faekat.livejournal.com]

I love your costume!

I've completely forgotten the name of the bubble straw thing although I saw it several times during my holiday shopping.

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[oakenguy.livejournal.com]

Ooo yeah, that's another problem, the bubblewand makes tiny bubbles--the largest are marble-sized. I need to experiment with a larger wand and see whether they will still hold their shape.

I remember those rubber-bubble things with the tie-dyed colors! That smell was intense and sorta vertigo-inducing...and not in a nice way, either.

[frla.livejournal.com]

I had been thinking about buying those
and fillin gthem with naptha
to see if we could get them to burst with little fire balls
but my luck with fire effects has been abysmal

but you have made me decide to get them anyway
I want to burble joyously too

KK!

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[oakenguy.livejournal.com]

Ooo, little pea-sized fireballs. Much random fun with candles. *makes notes for Burning Man*

I'm told that there are certain liquid detergents which make bubbles that glow in the dark. Make *those* flammable and the world will beat a path to your door.

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[frla.livejournal.com]

they are only pea sized?
damn
it is one of the effects I have wanted to do for awhile
i need to go to stunt man school so I can learn soem of this fire crap

KK!

[freyja.livejournal.com]

you should be doing product reviews.

[faekat.livejournal.com]

I saw those in the Discovery store and thought about picking them up to see what it was all about. Thank you for your lovely product review, dear.

I still might pick them up because I'd like to dance around like a pretty Christmas tree too.. I mean, not like you.

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[oakenguy.livejournal.com]

Hee! If you want, you can borrow mine.

--signed, easily-distracted-boy

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[faekat.livejournal.com]

Oh can I! Bring them over and I'll make you cookies. Did you get those birdies for presents?

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[oakenguy.livejournal.com]

I still haven't found them! I'm hitting two more stores tonight, and then falling back on a birdsong CD idea.

Mmmmm, cookies. :)

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[faekat.livejournal.com]

Have you hit the REI store? That's where I found them on-line. They have an REI store in Natick/Framingham.

[aquagirl.livejournal.com]

that must be the strange substance i had a run-in with in the pru. while standing, waiting for my friend, some bubbles floated by. of course i tried to catch one. my other friend & i marveled at how it wasn't deflating, so i tried to see if it would pop. sho nuff it deflated and left a vaguely sticky corpse behind, stuck to my finger. i was deeply disturbed.

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[oakenguy.livejournal.com]

Oooo, surreal. And that's the other thing about them--they float for a looooooong time. That particular one might've drifted over from Newbury Street.

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[aquagirl.livejournal.com]

true; maybe i ruined it's shopping excursion.

[faekat.livejournal.com]

Okay, I caved tonight and bought some for myself. Hazmat was delighted by them as well as me. They're now decorating the kitchen floor. ;)