Make a Dry Ice Bubble in 6 Steps

With this experiment, create a bubble full of swirling fog, then watch it burst.

 

Materials you'll need

• dish soap
• water
• small bowl
• paper towels
• large clear bowl
• chunk of dry ice (ask an adult to handle this)

⚠️ Warning: Grownups only on the dry ice. It's about -109°F, so use tongs, thick gloves, or a towel instead of bare hands. Work near an open window and keep the container open; sealed containers can burst. Never eat dry ice or put it in a drink. Let leftovers disappear on their own in an open container, out of reach.

Step-by-step tutorial

Step 1: In a small bowl, add dish soap to some water and mix until it's bubbly. This is your soap solution.

Step 2: Fold a paper towel three times, hot dog style, then bring the two ends together and twist them into a loop-shaped wand.

Step 3: Dip the wand into the soapy water until it's fully coated, then set it aside.

Step 4: With an adult handling it, lower a chunk of dry ice into a large bowl of water. Watch as thick white fog immediately starts pouring out of the bowl.

Step 5: Drag the soapy wand around the entire rim of the bowl to stretch a soap film across the top, sealing the fog inside.

Step 6: Watch the film balloon upward into a bigger and bigger dome as gas keeps building up underneath. Wait for it… it'll pop in a huge cloud of fog!

Learn more

Dry ice is frozen carbon dioxide, and instead of melting into a liquid like regular ice, it sublimates, turning straight from a solid into carbon dioxide gas. Dropping it into water speeds up that sublimation, but the big white cloud you see isn't the carbon dioxide itself, which is invisible; it's tiny droplets of water vapor condensing out of the air because the gas is so cold. As more gas fills the bowl, the soap film stretched across the rim traps it like a lid, so the gas pushes upward and balloons the film into a bigger and bigger dome. Eventually there's too much gas for the film to hold, and it pops, sending all that fog spilling out at once.

If this one was a hit, Bubble Machine takes bubble science further with a machine kids engineer themselves to test bubble formulas and keep the bubbles coming.