A new setup for giant soap films characterization

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel experimental setup for generating and characterizing large soap films, enabling controlled studies of their properties such as height, lifetime, and thickness over time.

Contribution

The work presents a new controlled setup for producing and analyzing giant soap films, expanding the scale and precision of previous studies.

Findings

Maximum soap film height measurement

Soap film lifetime analysis

Thickness mapping over time

Abstract

Artists, using an empirical knowledge, manage to generate and play with giant soap films and bubbles. Until now, scientific studies of soap films generated at a controlled velocity and without any feeding from the top, studied films of a few square centimeters. The present work aims to present a new setup to generate and characterize giant soap films (2~m $\times$ 0.7~m). Our setup is enclosed in a humidity-controlled box of 2.2~m high, 1~m long and 0.75~m large. Soap films are entrained by a fishing line withdrawn out of a bubbling solution at various velocities. We measure the maximum height of the generated soap films, as well as their lifetime, thanks to an automatic detection. This is allowed by light-sensitive resistors collecting the light reflected on the soap films and ensures robust statistical measurements. In the meantime, thickness measurements are performed with a UV-VIS-spectrometer, allowing us to map the soap films thickness over time.