Mad Scientist Invents Colored Bubbles

Anonymous Custard writes "Popular Science has a fascinating article up about toy inventor Tim Kehoe's quest to create colored bubbles. 'Chemical burns, ruined clothes, 11 years, half a million dollars--it's not easy to improve the world's most popular toy. ... It turns out that coloring a bubble is an exceptionally difficult bit of chemistry.'"

Comments

Think of the possibilities...

[Massamune]

Like a man made rainbow, practical jokes that only last 30 seconds. Truly impressive, though I wonder what the cost of the chemical reagents required is, lactone rings are fairly expensive to synthesize if I recall my organic chemistry correctly.

Re:He's not a Mad Scientist!

[Mr2cents]

I liked the exploding bubble. The article didn't say much about it, but my guess is that it might have been nitric acid reacting with glycerin (producing .. nitroglycerin!). Glycerin is often used for making bubbles, it allows them to grow larger.

I did some experiments trying to create nitroglycerin when I was 17, but later I learned that the nitric acid sold commercially contain chemicals that inhibit the reaction (the bastards!). Maybe the guy found a way to inhibit the inhibitor?

Re:Patent or trade secret?

[The Journalist]

all you'd need is a reasonably competent chemist to reverse-engineer the formula)

Although you seem to have read the article, you also seem to have missed a few key points:

From TFA:

• "Ram Sabnis is a leader among a very small group of people who can point to a dye-chemistry Ph.D. on their wall."
• "'What Ram did was an extremely difficult bit of chemistry,' [says Darlene Carlson, a former 3M chemist]."
• "'Nobody has made this chemistry before,' Sabnis says. 'All these molecules--we will make 200 or 300 to cover the spectrum--they don't exist. We have synthesized a whole new class of dyes.'"

Color me cynical, but I doubt even a "competent" chemist could reverse engineer something like this.

Re:He's not a Mad Scientist!

[Mr2cents]

The tests I did was with nitric and sulphuric acid mixed together. The sulphuric acid's role was indeed to boost the reaction. But if my understanding is correct, the nitric acid alone can also form nitroglycerin, just less, and it's slower. It could be enough to produce an audible bang.

Re:He's not a Mad Scientist!

[Muhammar]

Here is how you can make exploding bubbles by yourself:
1.Get the bubble toy solution.
2. Get the acetylene/oxygen welding torch to blow them.
3. make these suckerz and ignite with a long twig

(you do not turn the flame on when using the torch, of course).

This explosive gas mixture trick works with hydrogen/oxygen also (and you get lighter-than-air floating bubbles) but acetylene+oxygen gives *much* stronger bang for the volume. Once we filled modest-size thrashbag with the mix and it cracked the window (and our eardrums) - and yes, we were standing on the veranda outside the house.