Boo Bubbles - Ghostly Dry Ice

Warning: Never trap dry ice in a jar without a vent. The pressure will build up and the jar will explode! This could cause serious harm to you or to someone else.

Making the Dry Ice Cloud Generator

The Dry Ice Cloud Generator featured is constructed out of a gallon size plastic jar with a 3 foot long piece of rubber tubing attached to the side. The goal is to attach the tubing to the top part of the jar so that the fog created by mixing dry ice and water blows out of the tube when you twist on the lid. The free end of the rubber tubing is attached to a small funnel or something similar to help blow bubbles when it’s dipped into a soapy water solution. The best advice is to start with the plastic jar and spend some time walking through the plumbing aisles of your local hardware store.

Experiment

1. Fill the jar half full with warm to hot water. Dry ice produces the best fog when you use warm water. Attach the rubber hose to the side of the jar (if it’s not already attached).
2. Drop a few good sized pieces of dry ice into the jar. Immediately the fog will roll out of the jar. Practice covering the top of the jar with the lid to control the flow of fog out of the tube.You don’t have to screw the lid onto the jar. Just hold it on top of the jar to force or more less fog through the rubber tubing.
3. Make a soapy solution by mixing a squirt (that’s a technical term!) of liquid soap with about 4 ounces of water in the small plastic container. For even stronger bubbles, use Extreme Bubble Solution.
4. Dip the free end of the rubber tubing into the bubble solution to wet the end of the tube. Remove the tube from the bubble solution with one hand while covering the jar with the lid in the other hand. This will take a little practice, but it’s easy once you get the hang of it. The goal is to blow a bubble filled with fog.
5. When the bubble reaches the perfect size, gently shake it off of the tubing and it will quickly fall to the ground (it’s heavier than a normal bubble because the bubble is filled with carbon dioxide gas and water vapor). When the bubble hits the ground, it bursts and the cloud of fog erupts from the bubble. Very cool.

Touchable Boo Bubbles

Purchase a pair of inexpensive children’s winter gloves (100% cotton gloves also work well). Blow a bubble about the size of a baseball with the Dry Ice Generator. Bounce the bubble off of your gloves. Try bouncing the bubble off of your shirt or pants. As you’ll soon see, some fabrics work better than others. Try bouncing bubbles on a hand towel.

Giant Boo Bubbles

Regular-sized Boo Bubbles are awesome, but Giant Boo Bubbles are even more awesome!  All you need are a few parts and pieces from around the house and you'll be making these giant, fog-filled bubbles in no time.

1. Cover a table surface with a thin layer of soap bubble solution and spread it around.
2. Fill the large water bottle with hot (NOT boiling) water and drop in a few large pieces of dry ice.
3. Place the shop-vac hose over the open nozzle on the large water bottle.
4. Gas will start flowing out of the hose... make sure you don't plug the hose so the gas can't escape... that never ends well, trust us.
5. Dip the open end of the hose into the bubble solution and put it down on the soap-covered table. A giant Boo Bubble will start forming on the surface of the table! 
6. Keep the nozzle down and your bubble will just get bigger and bigger and bigger.
7. When the bubble finally pops, all of that carbon dioxide gas will escape, leaving a ghostly fog behind.

How does it work?

Steve Spangler combined the idea of filling bubbles with dry ice fog with his Bouncing Bubble activity to create a Bouncing Boo Bubble. While blowing bubbles indoors, you might have noticed the occasional bubble that fell to the carpet but didn’t pop. Regular bubbles burst when they come in contact with just about anything. Why? A bubble’s worst enemies are oil and dirt. Boo Bubbles will bounce off of a surface if it is free of oil or dirt particles that would normally break down the soap film. They break when they hit the ground, but they don't break if they land on a softer fabric like gloves or a towel.

Additional Info

The original idea of creating fog filled bubbles came from a demonstration presented by Bob Becker in 1995 called a Leaky Faucet. Fog filled bubbles dropped from a “faucet” made out of PVC pipe. Steve Spangler updated this idea by being able to control the flow of the carbon dioxide gas with his Dry Ice Cloud Generator. Steve also added his Bouncing Bubble demo using knit gloves to create a ghostly looking “touchable” bubble that vanishes with a burst of smoke.