Hi Dick -

>I just saw the You Tube video of Sterling Johnson doing hand blown
>bubbles. I saw a recipe he uses somewhere on a website in Denmark
>but now have lost the website. I would like to try to start doing
>the hand blown ones. Right now I tell children the story of a little
>boy who lost his bubble wand and had to find other "wands" around
>the house. Then we move up into different bubble tricks with the
>culmination being putting children inside a bubble so that the
>little boy could get his "Doctorate in Bubbles"!
> Thanks for any help on the bubble formula!

A word to the wise...

It isn't especially difficult to learn or teach how to do hand blown
bubbles. For goodness sake, even I know how to do them. I've seen
Sterling teach countless people how to do hand made bubbles. One
member's night at the Exploratorium he taught my kids how to make
them, and they taught their friends, and their friends proceeded to
teach total strangers how to make them. All it the same evening,
using a fairly mediocre bubble mix.

But if you are thinking that just because Sterling told you his
bubble formula (which he freely divulges to anyone who is interested,
just as I do for mine) you are going to be replicating what appears
in his performances, I suggest you reconsider. What Sterling does in
his performances is much more subtle and sophisticated than most folks realize.

If you go back and look at the video, you'll see that Sterling uses
two bowls (which are mounted on nicely engineered stands), but what
is not obvious is that one bowl has his mix in it, and the other has
plain water. Sterling dips one hand into the water, and the other
into his mix, then rubs them together, in effect creating a "custom"
mix on the fly.

So much depends on the atmospheric conditions, what particular effect
is being attempted, the audience interaction, how the mix is working,
the touch and feel of the mix, that I don't think even Sterling can
tell you how he does it (and Sterling concurs).

Good luck, and let us know how it goes.

Ciao - Brian