Bubble, bubble, toil and success

It started with a simple concept: bubbles. But Central Middle School eighth-grader Carolyn Jons has turned that concept into a national-award-winning science project.

“My project was the effect of soap bubble size on insulative ability of foams,” said Jons.

First, she won the Eden Prairie School District Science Fair, then regionals, then state. Further awards were earned at the Minnesota Academy of Science State Science and Engineering Fair held in Bloomington in March. Jons eventually ended up qualifying out of 300 semi-finalists from around the country to be among the 30 finalists competing in the Broadcom Math, Applied Science, Technology and Engineering for Rising Stars middle school national science competition held in Washington, D.C. There, she scored among the top 10 and took home the Rising Star Award, which includes a trip to watch the Intel ISEF high school competition in Pittsburgh.

According to a news release, “She investigated whether bubbles would provide adequate insulation against heat loss in a bathtub or outdoor whirlpool. She developed an experiment to test the insulating capability of soap bubbles and to determine whether large or small bubbles were better insulators. She hypothesized that a layer of small bubbles would be a better insulator than a layer of large bubbles. Through her research, she confirmed that bubbles prevent heat loss, but found no significant difference in the insulating ability of small versus large bubbles.”

Jons has been participating in science fairs since she was in first grade, but this year knew her interests were soap bubbles and insulation.

While doing research on the subject, she found a website looking into how soap bubbles were providing insulation for a green-house in Canada, she said.

It made me wonder if soap bubbles could provide an affective means of insulation, and from there, her project began.

At the Broadcom event the focus is on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) and teamwork. At the event, participants were broken up into teams and put to work on a number of problems. Judges weren’t so much looking to see teams get the perfect answer, but instead they wanted to watch their thinking process, noted Jons.

The teams had five different challenges, she said. One involved water purification. They were to determine what polluted a sam-ple of water. “There wasn’t very much detail and you had to go research facts on various pollutants,” said Jons.

Another project involved building a circuit. For another project, they built a suspension bridge. And finally, on the second day, they built a Rube Goldberg machine.

For Jons, science runs in the family.

“My dad’s a scientist so I didn’t really have a choice not to enjoy science,” she said.

So far she’s mostly done physics projects but this year’s science project has something to do with mold growth. She won’t reveal more details.