Magnificent video footage shows a soap bubble freezing in less than 30 seconds on a morning of -28 ° C (18 ° F) in Winnipeg, Canada.
Relaxing images show the bubble gently trembling in the wind before it begins to form star-shaped ice crystals, like intricately cut pieces of tin foil, all over its surface.
These crystals grow until the perfectly spherical bubble solidifies completely, forming what looks like a peaceful ice planet from a very, very distant galaxy.
It was captured and posted on YouTube and Twitter by Heather Hinam, a Canadian-based artist, photographer and wildlife enthusiast.
“Cold, clear days with very little wind are great for freezing bubbles,” Hinam tweeted.
“-28 ° C this morning made me go out into the garden with the right camera, the bubble solution and the tripod.
“Here’s an icy zen moment for your afternoon.”
In the video, Hinam uses a clear tube dipped in a special solution, consisting of warm water, washing liquid, corn syrup and sugar.
“Sugar and corn syrup, from what I understand, adds a bit of structure to the bubble so it doesn’t come out so fast in the cold,” Hinam told MailOnline.
“They still show up very easily and I usually need several attempts before making one that is stable enough to freeze.
“I haven’t tried freezing bubbles with soap and water alone, but I have a feeling it would be harder to keep them intact long enough to freeze them.”
The images show Hinam blowing through the tube and the bubble forms smoothly and sways in the morning wind.
After only five seconds after the bubble has formed, small white brushstrokes begin to appear on various parts of its surface.
These brushes grow larger and larger, forming a variety of irregular crystalline formations and with elaborate patterns, which eventually fuse to form a complete ice sphere.
Nature Communications studies extensively explored the dynamics of frozen soap bubbles. Here, beautiful star-shaped ice crystals form over the bubble, like intricately cut pieces of tin foil.
“There is not enough life in this ice cube to fill a space cruise”: the bubble finally solidifies to form what looks like an ice planet in a very, very distant galaxy
This beautiful phenomenon is known as the “snow globe effect” and was detailed in a scientific article published in the journal Nature Communications in 2019.
“Drops or puddles tend to freeze from the spread of a single freezing front,” says the paper, written by Virginia Tech researchers.
“Instead, videographers have shown that as soap bubbles freeze, a lot of growing ice crystals can swirl with a beautiful effect that visually resembles a snow globe.”
The study’s author, Jonathan Boreyko, and colleagues investigated the heat transfer processes that govern the dynamics of soap bubble freezing.
The authors placed bubbles on a frozen surface with the room at two different temperature conditions and filmed the separate freezing processes.
When the bubble was deposited on an icy substrate in a freezer and the surrounding air had the same temperature as the bubble, the snow globe effect was observed, as was that of Hinam.
The 2019 study image shows the dynamics of bubble frosts in various environmental conditions. a) bubbles deposited on a frozen substrate inside a freezer, the freezing front caused local heating at the bottom of the bubble. This resulted in a flow of Marangoni and the bubble froze on several fronts. b) For bubbles deposited on a cold, icy substrate in a room temperature room, the freezing front grew from bottom to top evenly before stopping completely at a critical height.
The scientists described how it was the result of a phenomenon known as Marangoni flow, which sees a liquid flowing from areas of low surface tension to areas of high surface tension, causing ice crystals to come off. and swirl independently.
Finally, the entire bubble freezes as the crystal is added.
Meanwhile, for bubbles deposited on an icy, cold substrate at room temperature, the ice grew from bottom to top evenly.
The bubble froze from the coldest point (where the bubble was in contact with the frozen surface) and slowly rose upward.
This process stopped in the middle of the bubble due to poor conduction and eventually collapsed when it could no longer be maintained.
“The freezing front is slowly spreading upwards and stopping completely at a critical height,” the team reported.