Tag Archives : Amazing Arts

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To the human eye the bursting of a bubble is a simple affair. One prod of a finger and – pop! – it’s vanished in a split second. But as these breathtaking pictures show, the process is spectacular – if only we could see it. These images were taken with a slow-motion camera to show every stage of the soap bubble’s disappearance. Richard Heeks spent weeks capturing his images of the bursting of a bubble: This is how it begins. A tiny prod with a fingertip and the delicate surface of the bubble is broken Photographer Richard Heeks, from Exeter, used a fast shutter speed of 1/500th of a second and chose a perfect wind-free day so nothing would disturb his shoot, while his wife Sarah provided the all-important finger. A bubble is made up of three layers – one thin layer of water sandwiched between two layers of soap molecules. As Mrs Heeks’s finger breaks the surface tension, the perfect sphere is replaced by a round mass of soapy droplets which dissolve into the air. And the bubble is gone. Mr Heeks, a student, used a macro camera to get in close and had to wait patiently for a windless day. He even had to find a sheltered spot in his garden so any sudden gust would not disturb the shoot. As the droplets begin to fall away only a small part of the bubble’s surface is left intact It took him a month until he got the sequence right after seeing his nieces playing with bubble mixture. ‘I was looking ideas for new things to photograph and I just thought the bubbles looked beautiful and with a bit of luck I managed to get one mid burst,’ he said. ‘That’s what started it off. ‘One day I was so absorbed in the project I didn’t notice a group of builders watching me. I think I must have looked a bit of an idiot, but maybe they thought it was fascinating. Who knows, because I got embarrassed and scuttled back into the house.’ A bubble is actually made up of three layers – one thin layer of water sandwiched between two layers of soap molecules. No matter what the shape the bubble is initially, it will always try to become a sphere because it as the smallest surface area and requires the least amount of energy to achieve. The biggest bubble ever blown was 50 feet by 2 feet in diameter. It was achieved by David Stein from New York in 1988.