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Freezing bubbles can make ice crystals swirl because the advancing freeze front warms nearby parts of the thin film. That local temperature change creates a surface-tension gradient, which drives liquid flow along the film and can lift small ice crystals into motion. Researchers call the resulting spectacle the “Snow-Globe Effect.”
How freezing creates the crystal “dance”
A soap bubble is a very thin liquid film wrapped around air, not a solid ball of water. That geometry matters: it behaves differently from a droplet or puddle, which has a larger volume of liquid to conduct and store heat.
As ice advances through the bubble film, freezing releases latent heat. The heat changes the temperature—and therefore the surface tension—of nearby liquid. Differences in surface tension pull liquid along the film in a flow known as Marangoni flow.
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In the study’s interpretation, this flow breaks small ice particles away from the freeze front and carries them upward. The crystals then grow and swirl through the film, creating the snow-globe appearance. The authors infer how the particles detach from the observed flow, crystal appearance, controls and analysis; they did not directly see the tiny particles at the instant of detachment.
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Why the thermal setup changes what happens
The snow-globe effect appeared in one particular arrangement: the bubble and its icy support were both in a subfreezing, approximately isothermal environment. The same study tested bubbles on a cold substrate in room-temperature air and found a different freezing pattern.
| Experimental setup | Flow and crystals | Freezing outcome |
|---|---|---|
| Isothermal subfreezing environment: air and icy substrate were around −18 ± 2 °C in the reported freezer experiments. | Heat released at the freeze front drives Marangoni flow; small crystals are carried and swirl. | Multiple fronts grow together, and centimetric bubbles can freeze over on the order of 10 seconds. |
| Cold icy substrate with warm ambient air: substrate temperatures in the tests ranged from −10 to −40 °C; average ambient temperature was around 23 °C. | Initial Marangoni plumes are transient; the study did not observe the same snow-globe effect. | A bottom-up freeze front may stop partway up, leaving a liquid dome. |
These are outcomes under the study’s conditions, not universal thresholds for every bubble mixture or environment. In the warm-air arrangement, the thin film conducts heat inefficiently, affecting the balance between heat lost to the cold support and heat gained from the surrounding air.
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How quickly the crystals appeared
For the study’s centimetric bubbles in the isothermal setup, full freezing took on the order of 10 seconds. The researchers reported crystals becoming visible after roughly one second, at about 100 μm across, and an initial upward-flow speed of about 10 mm/s. These are experiment-specific observations, not guaranteed timings or sizes for bubbles made with other solutions.
What the researchers tested
Ahmadi and colleagues reported their findings in the 2019 Nature Communications paper “How soap bubbles freeze”. Their bubble solution contained 79% distilled water, 20% glycerol and about 1% dish soap by volume; it rested overnight before use. The researchers estimated its freezing point at approximately −6.5 °C.
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For the isothermal freezer experiments, bubbles enclosed either 500 μL or 10 mL of air and sat on an icy substrate in a walk-in freezer. For the warm-air tests, bubbles enclosed 5 μL or 500 μL of air and sat on a frosted cold stage, with substrate temperatures ranging from −10 to −40 °C.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Why some bubbles stayed partly liquid
In the cold-substrate, warm-air experiments, some bubbles reached a partially frozen equilibrium: the liquid dome remained for many minutes before deflating and collapsing. The 5 μL bubbles on the −40 °C substrate were an exception and could freeze completely. The result illustrates why a bubble’s freezing pattern depends on the heat moving through and around its thin film, rather than on cold temperature alone.
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