A psychedelic bubble

June 2, 2025 • 12:00 pm

Here’s an amazing video sent to me by reader Bryan Lepore. I didn’t quite understand what it showed, and he explained:

I think it is simply this:

1. Create a soap bubble from a soap solution that is sitting in a speaker/woofer.

2. Shine a light on the bubble. Here, you can see a ring of dots—that is simply a strip of LEDs in a ring. I have a light strip like this, and it produces unexpected results compared to an incandescent light.

3. Activate the speaker with different frequencies. This vibrates the bubble and the reflected image of the LED light strip.

… does that make sense?

Yep, sure does.

10 thoughts on “A psychedelic bubble”

  3. Obviously the worm holes to another dimension that we’ve all been waiting for.

  4. Wow – glad this was highlighted – glad it made sense. I couldn’t handle it when I first found it – had to wait a few days!

    You know I was going to read more about this but never got to it – and now I shall (quoting Wikipedia):

    Cymatics : (from Ancient Greek: κῦμα, romanized: kŷma, lit. ’wave’) is a subset of modal vibrational phenomena. The term was coined by Swiss physician Hans Jenny (1904–1972).

    (From en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cymatics)

    This is probably mesmerizing in stereo – that is, live – or perhaps recorded in stereo…

    I thought it looked like a Klein bottle – which is a non orientable surface :

    simple.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klein_bottle

    … to grasp the LED light effect – which I notice now are cycling through colors – one could take note of shadows cast in their light in your daily travels – sometimes multiple LED diodes are apparent by the multiple shadows…. you have to look for them…

    Enjoy!

  5. Yes. It makes sense. The bubble resonates at the frequency of the cone, creating the pattern. What makes sense to me is that there is a resonant pattern. What may be more difficult to explain is the shape of the pattern. An interesting question for the mathematicians among us.

  6. This is a very interesting result. The display is made both beautiful and complex by the 2D nature of the illumination, the soap bubble, and the spatial (and temporal) variation of the surface under vibration.

    A simpler display of some of what is going on can be generated by a grade-school science experiment I saw in the Denver Post in early 60s. You take a frozen OJ container (empty) and take bottom off so it is a small cylinder. You stretch half a balloon over one end to make a membrane which will vibrate when you talk into the tube. You glue a small piece of mirror on the membrane and stand near a sunny window so sunlight reflects off the mirror to wall or ceiling. When you talk or make sounds, the light will trace out a curve (a Lissajous figure) on the wall.
    Here is a YouTube video kind of doing this in 21st century way that might make this clearer:

    1. Cool – but these are Chladni patterns (Ernest Chladni, 1787).

      Some quick notes :

      I have to find Cymatics by Hans Jenny which apparently has some 2D diagrams. Published 1967, 1972…. looks like Ted Gioia – readers here know Gioia – wrote an introduction to a modern reprint believe it or not….

      Singer Margaret Watts Hughes in the 1880s created a device which from what I can tell is the predecessor of device in the video you posted. Her device is called the eidophone, using powder on the membrane instead of laser light to visualize the singing.

      A related device is a kaleidophone, invented by Charles Wheatstone in 1827. Wheatstone has some important inventions to look up!

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