A photographer captured enchanting footage of a soap bubble freezing over and turning into a delicate snowball after plunging the temperature in Winnipeg, Canada.
The beautiful footage was captured by Heather Hinam, a Canadian naturalist, artist, photographer and educator. His shared the video on Twitter, noting that “Cold, clear days with very little wind are ideal for freezing bubbles.”
“This morning’s -28 C [minus 18.4 degrees Fahrenheit] had me in the backyard with the good camera, the bubble solution and the tripod, “Hinam wrote.” Here’s a frozen moment of Zen for your afternoon. “
In the video, Hinam uses a clear tube dipped in soap to blow a bubble on a snow-covered surface. As the bubble gently moves back and forth, pinches of ice begin to speckle the soap film; these pins gradually become larger and form iridescent spots of ice crystals. Each icy spot contains dazzling textures, similar to a snowflake, and as the spots get bigger, it eventually melts into one another and forms a complete atmosphere.
Related: Frozen family fun: try these scientific experiments with cold weather
The effect is noticeable – but how does it work? The phenomenon once surprised scientists, but in 2019 a group of physicists invented it and published their findings in the journal. Nature communication.
The biggest mystery was how multiple patches of ice form on soap bubbles, rather than the ice that is just sown from one large patch that spreads to cover the entire sphere. Usually, when a small amount of liquid freezes, the freezing process begins at a single point of origin; that frozen area then cools the liquid on it, and so on until all the liquid cools and freezes, New report. This process determines, for example, how an ice cube would form in your freezer.
Bubbles follow the rule first, but quickly deviate from the pattern, the authors of the 2019 article found.
In an icy environment, a single point on the bubble first begins to freeze, as with an ice cube. As the stain freezes, rearrange molecules in the liquid water and melt it into a solid, and this rearrangement releases a small amount of energy in the form of heat.
But because a bubble is a hollow sphere, the heat dissipates in the remaining liquid water and allows it to flow to the top of the bubble. As more of the bubble freezes, more heat is released and the flow of water becomes stronger. This causes ice crystals to splinter off the frozen pieces of the bubble and spread over the surface. Each of these crystals forms its own ice seed colony, which grows larger and creates the fascinating “snowball” effect.
If you want to try to freeze bubbles for yourself, wait until the temperature drops below freezing and inflate the bubbles in the air; that way the bubbles will freeze before falling to the ground, Live Science reported earlier. The colder it is outside, the better the trick works.
Originally published on Live Science.