Sudsy Does It

Sorry to burst your bubble, kids.

But the secret ingredient in those slimy spheres that were swallowing you up Wednesday wasn’t sugar. Or salt. Or--as 7-year-old Amanda Levine speculated--

baking soda.

The industrial-strength bubbles that refused to pop even when excited kindergartners poked their hands through them were created from water, dishwashing liquid and glycerin.

“Glycewhat?” said Daniel Reisfeld, 6.

Amanda, Daniel and about 100 other children at Temple Beth Am’s Pressman Academy used the hardy mixture to create slinky bubble snakes, film-like bubble walls and bubble tubes large enough to stand inside.

They were taking part in a Bubble Festival at the school south of Beverly Hills. The event was designed to introduce them to such concepts as surface tension, molecular properties and abstract mathematics.

But a science lesson plan can disappear like a bubble in a breeze when a foamy Hula-Hoop is pulled from an inflated wading pool and lifted over the head of somebody like Jonathan Elihu, 7.

“Aaaiiieee!” squealed Jonathan as the soapy membrane formed between the hoop and the sudsy wading pool shimmied back and forth and then silently popped--spraying a fine mist in his face.

“I wanted to close my eyes, but I didn’t because I wasn’t afraid,” he said.

Kindergarten teacher Tova Baichman-Kass said buckets of bubbles were formed when volunteers mixed four gallons of water with four cups of Dawn dishwashing liquid and half a cup of glycerin. The glycerin is sold in pharmacies for use on chapped hands.

Children used everything from plastic six-pack rings to toy tennis rackets, strawberry baskets and slotted spoons to form bubbles, parent Ellen Ackerman said as Elliott Aziz-Lavi, 7, splashed sudsy foam over himself and the school’s carpeted floor with an eggbeater and a straw.

Elliott, like the other children, had an emergency change of clothes stuffed into his school backpack. He said he had no intention of trying the goopy glycerin trick at home.

“My mom doesn’t like the house messy or the rugs wet,” he explained.

Classmate Raymond Kramer viewed the Bubble Festival as a time-saver.

“I feel really clean,” said the 7-year-old. “I can skip my bath tonight.”