(upbeat music) - [Mister C] What time is it?

- [Children] It's science time.

♪ Its science, science, science time ♪ ♪ Let's have fun and just unwind ♪ ♪ One, two, three, four, here we go ♪ ♪ Learn so much your brain explodes ♪ (Mar.

C laughing) (pebbles rattling) ♪ It's so big you'll lose your breath ♪ ♪ Learning facts and real cool stuff ♪ ♪ Scream for more, can't get enough ♪ ♪ It's, it's science time ♪ It's fun you best believe ♪ Explore and learn new things ♪ Come and join me please - I'm Mister C, and this super smart group, is my science crew.

Lyla is our notebook navigator.

Alfred is our experiment expert.

Rylee is our dynamite demonstrator and London is our research wrangler.

Working with my team is the best, it makes learning so much fun.

Actually, you should join us.

Today, we're exploring surface tension.

What time is it?

- [Children] It's science time.

- Welcome back to another episode of "DIY Science Time."

I'm Mister C, and I'm so glad you're here as part of our crew.

(logo whooshing) Today we're talking surface tension, you know, that little science thing that when you pour a cup of water, it does this.

(water splashing) Yeah.

That can get messy sometimes.

And we're getting messy today because we're going to be using bubbles to talk more about surface tension.

In fact, I'm going to challenge you to build a square bubble with me, and you're gonna need a few materials.

- Our activity today is really going to clean up.

These are the things you're going to need.

A bucket, straws, chenille stems, dish soap, scissors and the most important thing you're going to need, is your science notebook.

A science notebook is a tool that every scientist should have and it gives us a place to record all of our learning.

Taking good notes and being organized allows us to be better scientists.

A science notebook allows us to go back and review all the data and information we've gathered during our experiments.

Plus, it allows us to share results with other scientists who might be interested in learning more about what we've discovered.

Whenever you see the notebook pop up on the screen, like this, it's a reminder that this is a good place for us to jot down new information.

You can see I've already added a title and the list of materials for today's activity.

Our crew is still going to have lots of information to collect and organize as we go through the experiment, so keep your notebook handy.

Most importantly, the more you use the science notebook, the better you'll get a taking notes and recording data.

If you don't have a science notebook yet, download a copy of Mister C's science notebook from the website.

- We know that if we pour water or spill water on a table, it creates a puddle of water.

But what happens if we take water and drop it onto a penny?

How many drops do you think we can get onto this penny before the water spills over?

Let's give it a try.

(gentle music) Surface tension occurs because the molecules of liquid are attracted to one another.

This cohesive force keeps the water from spilling over the edge of the penny.

As we drop more water on the penny, we start seeing the rounded shape at the surface.

The molecules below the surface are attracted to one another and pull in all directions.

However, the water molecules on the surface experience an inward pull because they don't have as many molecules to hang on to.

This is what makes the surface of water so strong.

Eventually we add too much water and the force of gravity is greater than the surface tension of the water causing it to spill over.

We're going to need to get sudsy, so we need to make our bubble solution to better understand surface tension.

I like a recipe that uses two cups of water to one cup of dish soap.

Now, I have four cups of water here, that means I'm going to add two cups of dish soap to my recipe.

Let's get started.

(water bubbling) (bright upbeat music) One, Oh, it smells good.

Two, and now we need to stir it up.

I'm gonna use my measuring cup so I can get as much of that soap off there as possible.

Now, we're gonna measure, oops, we already have measured.

We're going to mix this up really well, and what's going to happen is, it's going to become as consistent, consistency and we want that.

We want it to become nice and consistent so that we don't have lots of soap.

All right, I think it's pretty consistent.

Let's try something.

(bright upbeat music) I'm gonna take a little bit of soap solution out, bubble solution, and wipe it on your table top.

Then grab a straw, dip it in.

(bright upbeat music) Oh, that was so cool.

Let's try that again.

Adding the soap to the water, decreases the surface tension of the water and this allows the water to essentially bend.

Bend.

That's how we create this dome, this hemisphere.

But my question is, is can we get more than one dome inside of the dome?

Domed dome.

Oh, it popped.

Ah!

(bright upbeat music) Two, two, three, four, five.

One, two, three, Oh one popped.

Oh, give it a try.

Soap cleans our hands and it also reduces the surface tension of water.

The reason soap works so well is because soap molecules have two ends, the hydrophobic end and the hydrophilic end.

The hydrophilic end is attracted to water while the hydrophobic end avoids water and is attracted to grease and oils.

When you blow air into the soapy solution, the air gets trapped inside and forms a bubble.

The walls of a bubble are pretty cool and there are three layers.

A soap layer, a water layer and then another soap layer.

And if we look really closely, we can see that those soap molecules are all lined up in a similar fashion.

The hydrophilic end of each soap molecule is attracted to the water molecules while the hydrophobic end is trying to stay away as far as possible.

The bubble eventually pops because the water between the layers of soap evaporates.

We're finally actually going to build our square bubbles.

Well, we're actually gonna blow a square bubble using a 3D cube.

In order to build a 3D cube, we need two dimensional squares to do that.

So we're gonna use our straws and our chenille stems.

First things first, I'm going to take an extra straw and mark where I think my cube is going to fit in the container.

This ensures that when I submerge it, it's all going to get wet and I'll be able to blow a cube bubble.

Looks like I am set and ready to go, so now I need to cut this to use it as a template.

(bright upbeat music) There's one, and now I need to do that with the next 12.

(bright upbeat music) (straws popping) (laughing) That was cool.

(air whooshing) Do that again.

(bright upbeat music) (straws popping) Oh, the sound is just amazing, hearing those straws hit the table.

(straws popping) Now that I have my straws cut, I'm going to be able to put the chenille stems into the straws.

(bright upbeat music) That's a little too long.

Here's what I'm going to try.

I'm going to fold it in half because I think that's going to give me just enough extra chenille stem on the outside, on each side.

Let's see what we've got here.

That's perfect.

So let's just talk measurements really quickly.

This straw has been cut down to, four and a half inches and my chenille stem has been cut to six inches.

So if you want to build a cube just like mine, the straws are cut to four and a half inches and the chenille stems are six inches.

Let's get these other ones cut.

(bright upbeat music) So once you have everything cut, now we slide the chenille stem into the straws.

So we need four of each color, one, two, three, four, five, six seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12.

I'm gonna take my extra chenille stems, place them over here to the side.

I'm going to keep them just in case I need them, I don't think I will, but now it's time to actually build a cube.

We're gonna create a square first.

(bright upbeat music) All right.

So there's our base, that's gonna be the bottom of our cube.

Now you're gonna take the pink ones and you're going to connect them just like this.

(bright upbeat music) This is going to be the base, these are going to be the sides, so we need to make one more square to top off our cube and that's what we're gonna use the green chenille straw stems for.

Set this over here for a second.

(bright upbeat music) All right.

So we have our square.

I'm gonna bring this back over and now I'm gonna connect this one to this front.

(bright upbeat music) We built a cube!

It's close to a cube.

We're going to call it a cube.

So, some of my straws aren't equal lengths so it's not a perfect cube, but you can definitely see this is a three-dimensional shape.

All right.

So now what we're going to do, is we're gonna put this into, Ooh, it's going to fit barely, look at that.

It's barely going to make it.

But I definitely don't have enough liquid in there.

I need to add more solutions, so I need to double that, maybe even triple it so I have lots of bubbles solutions so we can actually build and blow the square bubble.

Now what we do, we take our cube, dip it in.

There it is.

(bright upbeat music) It's a, Oh!

It's a cube bubble, did you see it?

This is super cool, I could keep doing this all day long.

We're gonna give it one more try.

It forms that little square automatically, I'm gonna hold it nice and still.

(bright upbeat music) And I have the perfect cube bubble.

- When bubbles are formed, they stretch and look like long giant worms.

But once a bubble is sealed and removed from the bubble wand, the tension in the bubble causes it to shrink to its smallest possible shape for the volume of air inside of it.

This is what creates the common and familiar sphere we see floating through the air.

- We've been soaking up lots of new information about surface tension.

I never knew that soap molecules had two different ends and that a bubble was created by soap and water layers being sandwiched together.

And that bubble cube, wasn't that cool?

I included the results in the data section.

Mnh, I wonder if you could make other three-dimensional shape bubbles inside different geometric shapes?

Sounds like something that would be really fun to try.

We could also try making changes to that bubble solution recipe.

- The longest free floating soap bubble was created in New Zealand and was 105 feet long.

If you could stand that upright, it would be one third as tall as the Statue of Liberty.

(bright upbeat music) - For this next activity, we're gonna spice things up with a little bit of pepper.

Take some water and pour it onto your plate.

(bright upbeat music) And now what we're going to do, is we're going to let the water settle just for a moment.

Now that the water is settled, we're going to sprinkle pepper all over it.

(bright upbeat music) All right.

And with the power of dish soap and surface tension, we're gonna take a drop of dish soap and put a right in the center of the pepper.

Three, two, one.

Oh, that's so cool.

I think we should try it again with way more pepper to see what it looks like.

I've got my second plate, so let's set it up again.

(bright upbeat music) I'm gonna let it settle just to slow down a little bit, and once it's ready, we're going to add our pepper.

(bright upbeat music) Oh, it's about to make me sneeze, it's so peppery.

Okay, here we go.

Take our soap.

Three, two, Oh, I dropped some in.

I didn't mean to do that but it... (Mister C sneezing) Oh, I'm so sorry.

The pepper is so bad.

The pepper is so bad.

But look, it moved it, it moved it just like it did before.

I'm gonna add a little bit more but now the surface tension broke.

(bright upbeat music) - Did you know that some fish create a nest of bubbles as a home to protect their baby fish eggs?

Male betta fish make lots of tiny air bubbles to protect and hide eggs from predators.

- Agnes Pockels was a self-taught German scientist who lived in Germany during the 1800s.

While cleaning in her kitchen, she began observing and learning about surface tension.

Her fascination with the behavior of water, soap and dirt, led to her developing a scientific tool called a slide trough.

This trough allowed Agnes and other scientists to measure and better understand surface tension.

- I'm in the kitchen too, just like Agnes Pockels.

And we've been exploring all day talking about surface tension.

So we're gonna actually try to replicate that experiment by building our own slide trough right now.

You need a couple of things, pretty simple.

I have a baking pan or yeah, I was going to say cookie sheet but those would be like ginormous cookies.

But I have a baking pan, I've got some water, some dish soap and a couple pieces of aluminum foil.

First things first, let's add some water to our container.

(water bubbling) (gentle music) Perfect.

So now what we're going to do, is we're gonna let the water settle just for a second 'cause it's already moving quite a bit.

And while it's doing that, I'm gonna take a piece of aluminum foil, I got two pieces.

But I'm gonna take a piece of aluminum foil and I'm gonna make sure that it fits so that it can easily move back and forth.

And now I'm gonna fold it in half, (aluminum foil rattling) and then I'm gonna set it down into my water.

(bright upbeat music) Take an applicator, dip it in soap.

It worked, the slide trough worked.

When we put the soap in over here, it broke the surface tension.

The water molecules broke and they slid this way causing our aluminum foil to move that direction.

I wonder if it'll actually do something on this side as well?

Nope.

The surface tension has already been broken.

Let's try it again.

So we put it in the center last time.

I washed this out, I'm hoping I got all the soap out because if there's still soap residue on the inside, it's going to break the surface tension of the water pretty much right away and it probably won't allow our experiment to work.

But what's really cool is you can try this different ways too.

Put it in the center, put it on the left, put it on the right.

You can see how strong the surface tension is, and my goal is to see if I can get it to float all the way to the other side.

So I have another piece of aluminum foil.

I'm gonna create my little boat, (aluminum foil rattling) and I'll place it over here on the side.

Perfect.

And now grab your dish soap.

Oh, it almost went the whole way.

That was super cool.

So I used the same soap that we use for our bubble solution, but what about hand soap?

What about different types of dish soap?

Will it have the same impact?

Give it a try.

This is super cool, super fun, and thanks Agnes Pockels for doing science in your kitchen so that we have something to do in our kitchen.

Pretty cool.

(bright upbeat music) - Ever wonder why it can be difficult to make bubbles?

It's because you have to have the right solution.

(chuckles) Be sure to visit the website to get activity sheets and bubble solution recipes to make your own bubbles.

- Here is another cool activity that you can try.

We know that paper clips dropped into water sink.

But, what if we could actually get it to float on top of the water?

Here's the trick.

We need to get this to sit gently on the top of the water so that surface tension allows our paperclip to hang out and float around.

How do we do that?

You need a second paper clip.

That's right.

You're gonna take your first paper clip and open it up, you're going to bend it open.

So it's basically like a little ladle, like something to kind of, like an L shape.

Yeah.

Ladle stands for L. Now what we're gonna do is we're gonna take the paperclip and carefully place it on there.

Submerge.

It worked, it worked, it worked.

Look at it, our paperclip is actually floating in the water and that's all because of surface tension.

Those water molecules are strong enough to hold it up and prevent it from falling in.

But what if we take some soap?

It breaks the surface tension causing the paperclip to fall into the water.

Pretty cool, right?

Surface tension!

Yay, yah.

(laughs) - Water skimmers are small bugs that are so light that they don't break the surface tension on top of the water.

This allows them to walk and skim across the water.

(air blowing) (gentle music) (bright upbeat music) - What an amazing day today, talking about surface tension.

And if I'm being honest, we've only scratched the surface.

(laughs) I'm sorry, I had to say that.

Bad joke.

But no, seriously, we explored how soap decrease the surface tension of water and allows us to make pretty amazing things like cube bubbles.

Our cube here was able to create those cube bubbles on the inside because of surface tension.

And I didn't think this was big enough so I decided to make one of those and I'm thinking how much bigger could I actually make it?

I don't even know how long chenille stems can get at the store.

Like, wouldn't it be awesome to have like a six foot cube bubble that you could hop in and be like, I want to take my notes inside of a cube today, hello?

(laughs) And my team has been phenomenal, and without them, I wouldn't be able to learn nearly as much.

And remember, I've got my notebook so I'm taking notes, recording data, so I can come back and check it out another day.

Keep learning, keep exploring, have fun and remember science is wherever you are.

(bright upbeat music) ♪ It's science time All finished and said and done.

I have 12 of each but...

I like to use a ratio of two, two.

Oh!

Let's try it again.

Take, Oh, that's so cold.

♪ It's science time ♪ It's science time ♪ It's so much fun.

♪ Learning fun for everyone, everyone ♪ Oh, that's so cool, it's bouncing so awesome.