Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

My daughter is in 6th grade and is doing her science fair project on "What shampoo produces the most bubbles?" She intends to use four different 500 mL water bottles adding one of four different shampoos in each bottle; however, she needs help on how to determine/measure the amount of bubbles are produced in each bottle. Any advice on this experiment would be greatly appreciated-thank you.

One possibility would be to use a bicycle pump to blow a certain amount of air into the shampoo solutions. Whatever method she uses, she should try to be as consistent as possible (e.g. same amount of air expelled over the same amount of time at the same depth in the solution) when blowing bubbles in each of the bottles.

Good luck!

Chris

One way to compare is to compare the volume of total bubbles or the size of individual bubbles or a combination of both. On a related note, you could also measure how long the bubbles last until they all pop.