Icy Experiments

It was (or so it seemed) bitterly cold with a fine flurries of snow flying about. So I decided to have a go at trying to make a frozen ice bubble.

I used a mixture which I made up for some soap bubble photos some time ago and last used a few weeks ago. I used the handle out of a shop-bought bottle of children's bubble solution to form the bubbles (the mixture itself never successfully produced bubbles for photographic work), and soon found they needed to be small to have any chance of surviving long enough to shoot. 

The bubbles I managed to make lasted several minutes, but never froze. It was about -1°C ... my research suggested it needs to be at least -2°C.  However, if you look large at the main image you can see a snowflake on its top and there is evidence it was starting to freeze around its base, but by then I was getting cold!  Another attempt in extra.

For those interested, the solution I used was 1 tablespoon glycerin and 2 tablespoons of washing-up liquid in a half cup of water, left ovenight.