UFV London Trip: Aug 27: Lecture Day and Science Museum

The first thing I want to talk about is bubbles. Last night we had an absolutely phenomenal lecture titled "The Magic of Soap Bubbles." I had no idea what to expect. It turns out that blowing bubbles, while entertaining, is just about the least interesting thing you can actually do with a soap film or surface. The standard bubble-creating device often consists of a small ring with a handle that you dip into some soap and water solution. But the physics behind the surface that is formed by the soap film while inside the ring, or in bubble form, is that the film minimizes its potential energy, which corresponds to minimizing its area. With just this simple rule, if you construct more complex wire shapes to dip into the solution, say a cube, what you get out is sometimes not what you might expect and it is always fascinating to look at. In fact, you can even layer bubbles and have two or even three sharing the same space, all minimizing their area and making just a spectacular sight. This phenomena can even be used to solve specific optimization problems which would be highly complicated to find mathematical solutions; you let the soap do the work for you.

Unfortunately, I have no pictures of this event, as I was too busy scribbling down the different designs of the wire frames he was using and the methods with which he created the bubbles and shapes. I simply must recreate it at home, and I think that it will definitely be the topic of my Math Club presentation this fall!

This morning's lecture featured the heart and heart attacks, and we learned a lot of useful information about when to zap someone with a defibrillator and when that wouldn't be such a good idea. I also have gained an increased appreciation for the incredibly complex electrical structure of the heart.

After that, the science museum!