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Freezing soap bubbles can look like miniature snow globes because the advancing ice front sets the bubble’s thin liquid film in motion. In an isothermal, subfreezing setup studied by Ahmadi and colleagues, heat released as water freezes creates a surface-tension gradient. The resulting Marangoni flow can detach tiny ice crystals and carry them upward through the film. The authors call the display the “Snow-Globe Effect.”
How freezing makes the crystals move
A soap bubble is a thin liquid film surrounding air, not a solid or a bulk drop of water. That geometry matters: as the film freezes, the advancing boundary between liquid and ice releases latent heat into a very small amount of nearby liquid.
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The local warming changes surface tension along the film. A surface-tension gradient drives liquid from one part of the surface toward another, a motion known as Marangoni flow. In the researchers’ observations, this flow rose from the early freeze front at about 10 mm/s. The study’s authors conclude that the flow can break small ice crystals away from the front and carry them through the bubble, where they continue to grow and swirl.
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Repair common Windows errors and clear accumulated junk for a smoother, more stable PC - no reinstall needed.Free scan · no reinstallThe mechanism is supported by the observed flow, the appearance of crystals, control experiments and the authors’ analysis. They did not directly see the tiny particles at the instant they detached, so detachment is an inference rather than a filmed observation of each crystal breaking free.
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Why the setup changes the result
The snow-globe display was observed in an isothermal environment, where both the air and the icy substrate were subfreezing. It is not the universal way a soap bubble freezes. With a cold substrate exposed to room-temperature air, the balance of heat flow differs and the same sustained crystal-swirl behavior was not observed.
| Experimental condition | Isothermal subfreezing environment | Cold substrate in warm air |
|---|---|---|
| Temperature arrangement | Air and icy substrate were around −18 ± 2 °C in the reported freezer experiments. | Ambient air averaged around 23 °C; substrate tests ranged from −10 to −40 °C. |
| Flow and crystals | Latent heat at the freeze front drives Marangoni flow; crystals are carried and swirl. | Initial Marangoni plumes are transient; the study did not observe the same snow-globe effect. |
| Freezing pattern | Multiple fronts grow together, and centimetric bubbles can freeze over on the order of 10 seconds. | A front advances upward from the bottom and may stop, leaving a liquid dome. |
| Explanation | Local heating creates surface-tension gradients and flow that entrains crystals. | The thin film conducts heat inefficiently, affecting the balance needed for the front to keep advancing. |
These are results for the study’s solutions and experimental arrangements, not universal thresholds for every bubble or soap mixture.
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What the researchers measured
Ahmadi and colleagues reported their findings in a 2019 Nature Communications paper, “How soap bubbles freeze”. The numerical details describe their specific experiments:
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1Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors2Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches3Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems- In the isothermal freezer setup, ambient air and the substrate were approximately −18 ± 2 °C. The bubbles enclosed either 500 μL or 10 mL of air.
- Particles around 100 μm across became visible after roughly one second. The study describes full freezing of centimetric bubbles on a timescale of about 10 seconds.
- The authors estimated the freezing point of their glycerol-water soap solution at about −6.5 °C.
- For warm-air tests, bubbles enclosed 5 μL or 500 μL of air and sat on a frosted cold stage between −10 and −40 °C.
The solution used in the study contained 79% distilled water, 20% glycerol and about 1% dish soap by volume; it was left to sit overnight. Those ingredients and preparation describe the researchers’ experiment, not a validated home recipe or a guarantee that the effect will appear in another setup.
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Why some bubbles stop only partly frozen
In the warm-air experiments, the bottom-up freeze front could halt at a critical height instead of covering the whole bubble. The authors attribute this behavior to the thermal balance: the thin frozen section of the film conducts heat inefficiently, while the surrounding air remains warm. Some bubbles stayed as partially frozen liquid domes for many minutes before deflating and collapsing. The 5 μL bubbles on the −40 °C substrate were an exception and could freeze completely.
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