Here’s a new item for our category of soap bubble pictures. The movie shows a science-centre-style demo, not of a bubble, but of a soap sheet. It’s a way of showing patterns like the ones that appear on bubbles, but streaming down a huge sheet. The quality of the movie is not great, so here’s a still photo that shows the effect.
I think this was originally a Victorian demonstration, but I don’t have chapter and verse for that. It’s a demo you sometimes see in hands-on Science Centres, but often it’s not set up so that you can really see the colours. For that there has to be a black background to the sheet, and a translucent screen, at an angle of forty five degrees to the sheet, brightly illuminating it.
I’m fascinated by patterns like these. Just setting patterns in motion, as in many screen savers, doesn’t seem to me to produce effects that are as beautiful. I don’t think it’s just the colours. If we could characterise what makes these patterns special, might we then open up a whole new world of visual expression, using computer animation? Or would we just end up with a small repertoire of pretty effects?
Fancy trying to set up your own soap sheet? It’s not so hard.
