Mathematicians finally found the perfect bubble blowing formula. Science tackles the hard questions at last.

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It's all about windspeed.
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▼ Everyone who was once a child knows the incredible, simple joy that comes from blowing bubblesand watching an ultra-thin layer of liquid bob through the air before bursting apart. While it seems like magic when you’re a little kid, it turns out the mystery behind how bubbles work is not much more clear for adults. What’s the recipe that separates making a good  bubble from making a bad bubble?
A team of mathematicians from New York University decided to take on the super daunting task of solving that mystery, and their findings, published in the latest  issue of Physical Review Letters, brings us closer to understand how to blow the perfect bubble.
Okay, let’s be clear: it’s not as if the team decided they just had to figure out how to blow the perfect bubble and inspire a new generation of master bubble blowers. According to Leif Ristroph, a mathematician at New York University and a coauthor of the new paper, the study originated from a desire to learn more about fluid-structure interactions: problems where an object (in this instance, an object made of liquid film) is influenced by changes in an external flowing fluid (in this case, wind generated by blowing). And there are, in fact, relevant reasons to study bubble blowing.
“It's a huge area of research,” says Ristroph. “We've studied things like why a flag flaps in the breeze and how clay or some erodible material gets reshaped by flowing water. We wanted to study the important problem of how liquid films interact with flows, and what better problem to start with than blowing bubbles!”
It’s difficult to control, measure, and observe bubbles moving through the air with great precision. To bypass these complications, the team quickly realized they ought to create bubbles and visualize their movements underwater, a medium that’s easier to control. So they made films in water with common oils (like olive oil) and coaxed the water flow to form bubbles with help from a wire loop. The oil bubble is proxy for a soap film bubble, while the water is a proxy for wind. “Every good experiment involves a trick,” says Ristroph.  (▪ ▪ ▪)

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