Awesome Bubbles

You can pick up a bubble-blowing machine for about $20. But if you prefer to DIY all the things, CrazyScience has got you covered. In this video, they show how they built a simple bubble machine by drilling holes in a compact disc, attaching it to a motor and battery, adding a small fan, and using a water bottle as a reservoir. Read the full build guide on Instructables.

If you own a fancy sports car, you might store it beneath a tarp. WhistlinDiesel got their hands on something much more fun. The Car Capsule is an inflatable dome that creates a protective cushion of air around your ride. While it’s not totally puncture-proof, this short clip shows it holding up to all kinds of torture.

Hailing from Hyvinkää, Finland, Taija Taika is a magician and an expert soap bubble artist. If we knew that could be a profession, we might have chosen a different career path. Here, she shows off her unique skill by blowing a smoke-filled bubble, then using a bubble wand to bounce it like a tennis racket.

Normally the only hole on a soap bubble is the one that you blow through to fill it with air. But science vlogger and teacher Steve Mould shows us how it’s easy to make a perfectly circular hole in a film of soap using a loop of thread. He goes on to explain how it’s a useful metaphor for the way cell membranes work.

We’re fascinated by this short video of a star-shaped bubble wand as the frigid air hits it and causes ice crystals to form. We love how the crystals swirl to life across the filmy surface and the shapes they create in the warm orange glow of sunset.

Engineer Yukio Shinoda created this unique desk clock that tells time with air bubbles. As they rise to the surface of a glycerin-filled tank, the bubbles form dot-matrix digits. He’s also built a larger version that can display multiple digits and wider graphics.

Normally, if you want to blow big bubbles, you need to dip a bubble wand in a pool of soap bubbles. But designer pojken shows off a fun and easy gizmo that uses a pressurized garden sprayer, a wand, and a string frame to continuously feed giant bubbles on demand. Learn to build your own on Instructables.

Macro photography series Beautiful Chemistry presents an up-close look at the formation and behavior of bubbles, with different chemical solutions and electrical charges producing some very different volumes, sizes, and arrangements of the air-filled orbs. The accompanying soundtrack is wonderfully soothing.

Bubble-blowing expert Dustin Skye shows off a really slick trick, in which he blows a soap bubble, fills it with butane, uses his breath to start a vortex, then lights it on fire, producing a tiny fire tornado. More here.

(NSFW: Language)  We’re sure you’ve seen enough ALS ice bucket challenges but no one quite tops the enthusiasm of Trailer Park Boys’ ever-lovable Bubbles. He probably cuddled with his kitties afterward to warm back up.

Shanks FX latest clip not only creates amazingly huge, prismatic soap bubbles for us to enjoy, it captures their inevitable failure in spectacular slow-motion, and shows us a thing or two about how to make our own massive bubbles.