The 11 Year Soap Bubble 259
-Overdrive- writes "Popular Science has an interesting article about an inventor and his 11 year quest for Colored Bubbles" From the article: " It turns out that coloring a bubble is an exceptionally difficult bit of chemistry. A bubble wall is mostly water held in place by two layers of surfactant molecules, spaced just millionths of an inch apart. If you add, say, food coloring to the bubble solution, the heavy dye molecules float freely in the water, bonding to neither the water nor the surfactants, and cascade almost immediately down the sides. You'll have a clear bubble with a dot of color at the bottom. What you need is a dye that attaches to the surfactant molecules and disperses evenly in that water layer. Pack in more dye molecules, get a deeper, richer hue. Simple. Well, on paper anyway."
Yet another dup... (Score:2, Insightful)
Mad Scientist Invents Colored Bubble [slashdot.org]
Posted by Zonk on Thursday November 17, @03:19PM
Is expecting the /. editors to read the articls they post themselves too much to ask? Apparently so, and emailing the "on-duty editor" is a complete waste of time. Digg [digg.com] is looking better and better...
Is it safe? (Score:5, Insightful)
I noticed from the article that the dye they're using is a new/unusual organic compound. They're talking about people using the compound in their mouths (to know how long to brush their teeth), and the company's website shows pictures of kids playing with the bubbles.
But... is this product even safe? I'm not an organic chemist by any means, but it seems to me that you'd want to do a significant amount of testing on any new compound to make sure that it's not going to have any long-term negative effects.
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Free 411! 1-800-411-SAVE [1800411save.com]
11 years well spent? (Score:1, Insightful)
Assuming of course that there are no useful applications of a coloured dye that sticks to bubbles.
Re:Is it safe? (Score:2, Insightful)
Can't be any worse than your run-of-the-mill organic compounds, like urine or Gatorade for example.
Yes, and (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Yet another dup... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Yet another dupe... so what? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is especially true given the often-Libertarian nature of many of the comments on Slashdot. Many a time have I seen comments along the lines of "if people don't like violent video games, they should just not play them" etc. So why not apply the same logic to dupes? You see it, recognise it for what it is, and move on. There are plenty of other stories to check out.
Sometimes, I miss the original story (if it was only posted to games.slashdot.org for example and not the front page, or if I just don't happen to click on the original). In those cases, the dupes are helpful. And they really don't seem to harm anyone, so who cares if they pop up from time to time?
The actual bubbles (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Yet another dupe... so what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe some of us like things to be better?
Maybe some of us think they'll correct themselves if we point this out again & again?
Maybe it's just that we're nerds, and cant tolerate *OBVIOUS* mistakes, especially when it's trivial to prevent?
You know, if you keep missing these posts, you might as well subscribe to the remaining sections too right ?
Just a thought.
Re:Yet another dupe... so what? (Score:2, Insightful)
It's sloppy journalism. It reduces the value of ads, as it puts people off returning to the site if they keep seeing repeats. It's boring, and suggests the people running the site don't even bother to read it. Given the site's nerdy nature it's amazing no-ones knocked up the simple code required to give at least a simple pass over the stories before they're posted looking for some correlation between a new story and existing stories. And it happens very frequently.
Re:Is it safe? (Score:3, Insightful)
"Organic" chemistry simply means "with a carbon ring."
Don't recommend eating any of the above unless you like cancer.
Waste of time? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Yet another dupe... so what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because slashdot has thousands of submissions each day. Every dupe is a story that could have been posted that might have been more interesting.
Re:Yet another dupe... so what? (Score:5, Insightful)
People get irritated when they feel that 20% of the readers pay more attention to the site than the paid, so-called "editors."
Re:Waste of time?-Failed, so he hired an scientist (Score:4, Insightful)
hope they're paying the dye science guru guy well..
-A
Re:Yet another dup... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Is it safe? (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you really think they're going to notice the subtle difference between a clean tooth and one covered in bacteria? I swiped the toothbrush over my teeth once, I taste minty, that's good enough, right? There are TONS of products out there to help kids learn to brush long enough.
Re:Waste of time? (Score:3, Insightful)