Make your own cute Easter egg bubble wands… but what shape bubbles will they make? Fun Easter science project for kids.
Happy Easter everyone!
It’s Easter Saturday at our place right now, and this morning my 5.5 year old daughter Jewel came up with a cool idea to make some DIY Easter egg bubble wands, to see if we can blow Easter egg shaped bubbles. Sounds like fun!
Luckily we had everything we needed in our craft cupboard and kitchen drawers already. We made two Easter egg wands (as I have two daughters, and so making two of everything is just easier), but you could make as many as you like.
How to make Easter Egg Bubble Wands
We used:
- 3 x 6mm furry pipe cleaners (also called chenille stems) in orange, yellow and navy
- 2 x chopsticks
- scissors
- yellow packing tape (optional)
- bubble mix
I created a loop in two of the pipe cleaners, twisting to create rough ovals, leaving about 2 inches at the ends. I then sat each oval on the end of a chopstick, and tightly wound the ends of the pipe cleaner around the chopstick, to act as a handle.
I cut the third pipe cleaner into quarters, and bent each piece into a zigzag. I then twisted the ends of each zigzag to attach to the ovals, so they look like an Easter egg shape.
Lastly, as an optional extra step, I added tape around the handle to secure the pipe cleaners in place.
(We’ve made pipe cleaner bubble wands without the tape before, and they still work. It just means kids have to be a bit more gentle when waving the wands around, lest the pipe cleaner falls off the chopstick. If it does fall off however, it only takes a second to put it back on…)
And then all you need to do, is head outside, dip the new DIY bubble wands into your bubble mix, and blow!
Do they work? Do they blow Easter egg shaped bubbles?
That’s the big question! What’s your hypothesis? Now test and see if it’s true!
Fun Bubble Science Facts
Our (store-bought) bubble mix is made up of (mostly) soap and water. The soap makes the surface tension of water weaker than normal, and also forms a very thin skin (or film) that is flexible, perfect for making bubbles.
Bubbles are actually a film of soapy water with air trapped inside. There are two forces occurring here: the air inside the bubble is pushing out, whilst at the same time, the soapy film is pushing in. To balance these forces, the soapy film assumes the smallest surface area it can, and that shape (in the absence of other forces) just happens to be a sphere. Therefore, bubbles that float in air (without touching anything) always become round, regardless of the shape of the bubble wand used.
We’d done this experiment before, so Jewel knew the trick. She knew the bubbles would come out spherical, even though our bubble wand is an irregular shape. But she didn’t realise there would be three times as many bubbles, and they’d be smaller. That bit took her by surprise!
I haven’t delved into all the physics and chemistry to explain why the bubbles are round with Jewel just yet. I don’t want to overwhelm her! After all, fun science at this age is more about pondering, hypothesizing, experimenting, and being amazed. It’s enough that Jewel is learning that science is fun, that you can replicate a science experiment with slightly different variables to test results, and that bubbles are trickier than they seem!
EDIT: We’ve made a few more bubble wands since, and my kids understanding of bubble physics has grown too! If you’re interested, check out some of our other bubble science projects:
Or for more Easter science projects, you might also like
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