I have freely made use of the published work of many distinguished men, among whom I may mention Savart, Plateau, Clerk Maxwell, Sir William Thomson, Lord Rayleigh, Mr. Chichester Bell, and Prof. Rücker. The experiments have mostly been described by them, some have been taken from journals, and I have devised or arranged a few. I am also indebted to Prof. Rücker for the use of various pieces of apparatus which had been prepared for his lectures.
SOAP-BUBBLES, AND THE FORCES WHICH MOULD THEM.
I do not suppose that there is any one in this room who has not occasionally blown a common soap-bubble, and while admiring the perfection of its form, and the marvellous brilliancy of its colours, wondered how it is that such a magnificent object can be so easily produced.
I hope that none of you are yet tired of playing with bubbles, because, as I hope we shall see during the week, there is more in a common bubble than those who have only played with them generally imagine.
The wonder and admiration so beautifully portrayed by Millais in a picture, copies of which, thanks to modern advertising enterprise, some of you may possibly have seen, will, I hope, in no way fall away in consequence of these lectures; I think you will find that it will grow as your knowledge of the subject increases. You may be interested to hear that we are not the only juveniles who have played with bubbles. Ages ago children did the same, and though no mention of this is made by any of the classical authors, we know that they did, because there is an Etruscan vase in the Louvre in Paris of the greatest antiquity, on which children are represented blowing bubbles with a pipe. There is however, no means of telling now whose soap they used.
It is possible that some of you may like to know why I have chosen soap-bubbles as my subject; if so, I am glad to tell you. Though there are many subjects which might seem to a beginner to be more wonderful, more brilliant, or more exciting, there are few which so directly bear upon the things which we see every day. You cannot pour water from a jug or tea from a tea-pot; you cannot even do anything with a liquid of any kind, without setting in action the forces to which I am about to direct your attention. You cannot then fail to be frequently reminded of what you will hear and see in this room, and, what is perhaps most important of all, many of the things I am going to show you are so simple that you will be able without any apparatus to repeat for yourselves the experiments which I have prepared, and this you will find more interesting and instructive than merely listening to me and watching what I do.
There is one more thing I should like to explain, and that is why I am going to show experiments at all. You will at once answer because it would be so dreadfully dull if I didn't. Perhaps it would. But that is not the only reason. I would remind you then that when we want to find out anything that we do not know, there are two ways of proceeding. We may either ask somebody else who does know, or read what the most learned men have written about it, which is a very good plan if anybody happens to be able to answer our question; or else we may adopt the other plan, and by arranging an experiment, try for ourselves. An experiment is a question which we ask of Nature, who is always ready to give a correct answer, provided we ask properly, that is, provided we arrange a proper experiment. An experiment is not a conjuring trick, something simply to make you wonder, nor is it simply shown because it is beautiful, or because it serves to relieve the monotony of a lecture; if any of the experiments I show are beautiful, or do serve to make these lectures a little less dull, so much the better; but their chief object is to enable you to see for yourselves what the true answers are to questions that I shall ask.
