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Chapter 32: Problem 3

Why does a soap bubble turn colorless just before it dries up and pops?

Short Answer

Expert verified
A soap bubble turns colorless just before it pops due to thin film interference. As the bubble becomes very thin, the light rays reflecting off the front and back of the bubble have almost no path difference between them, causing destructive interference. This results in the bubble appearing colorless as the light waves cancel each other out.

Step by step solution

01

Understanding Thin Film Interference

Thin film interference is a phenomenon in which light waves reflected by the upper and lower boundaries of a thin film interfere with each other to form a new light wave. The color we observe in soap bubbles is a result of this interference. The film of a bubble is made of a layer of soap molecules sandwiched between two layers of water. When light shines on the bubble, it gets refracted, or bent, then reflected (bounced back), and finally refracted again. This bending of light causes some light rays to travel a longer path than others, creating a delay which is seen as a phase shift, or change in color.
02

The Color Change as the Bubble Thins

As the soap bubble starts thinning (which happens when water inside the bubble evaporates), the difference in the path length between the light rays decreases. Hence, the delay between them reduces. Because of this, the phase difference becomes tiny enough that the colors produced by the phase delays become less pronounced and eventually disappear.
03

The Bubble Becoming Colorless

Just before the bubble pops, the film becomes extremely thin, almost a molecular layer of water. The light rays then have nearly identical paths with almost no phase shift between them. This causes destructive interference, which means the light waves cancel each other out resulting in no color. This is why the bubble appears colorless just before popping.

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