Chemical burns, ruined clothes, 11 years, half a million dollars-it's not easy to improve the world's most popular toy. Yet the success of one inventor's quest to dye a simple soap bubble may change the way the world uses color
Posted 11.18.2005 at 3:00 am
7 Comments
Tim Kehoe has stained the whites of his eyes deep blue. He's also stained his face, his car, several bathtubs and a few dozen children. He's had to evacuate his family because he filled the house with noxious fumes. He's ruined every kitchen he's ever had. Kehoe, a 35-year-old toy inventor from St. Paul, Minnesota, has done all this in an effort to make real an idea he had more than 10 years ago, one he's been told repeatedly cannot be realized: a colored bubble.
No, not the shimmering rainbow effect you see when the light catches a clear soap bubble. Kehoe's bubble would radiate a single, vibrant hue throughout the entire sphere-a green bubble, an orange bubble, a hot-pink bubble. It's a bubble that can make CEOs giggle and stunned mothers tear up in awe. It's a bubble you don't expect to see, conditioned as you are to the notion that soap bubbles are clear. An unnaturally beautiful bubble.
Kehoe made a bubble like that when he was 26, after only two years of trashed countertops and chemical fires. He showed it to toy-company executives, who called it a "holy grail." And then it broke, as bubbles always do. And when it did, the dye inside escaped onto clothes and carpets and walls and skin, staining everything it touched. The execs told him to come back with a bubble they could wash off their boardroom table.
That was nine years ago. In the intervening years, Kehoe continued to mix, boil, and brew with endless enthusiasm and little success. Until one day, his stubborn persistence led him to $500,000 in financial backing, enough to hire a dye chemist. Together, they took Kehoe's obsession to an outcome even more amazing than he had ever hoped, an outcome no one could have anticipated for the simple reason that no one imagined it possible. The secret to nonstaining colored bubbles, it turns out, is a dye that could unlock a revolution in color chemistry. All you need to do is make color disappear.
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The next thing he has to do is make those bouncing bubbles again I know I would buy some
I am not that impressed with the chemistry of the dyes. From what I have gathered on a quick patent search it is essentially phenolphthalein derivatives (remember the acid base indicators) that are colourless when neutral but coloured when basic. What drives the colour change is probably just the co2 from the air making the slightly basic bubbles neutral. I once made a cloth for a company that turned pink when wet but dried clear and could be reused based on the same principle.
Way to go Tim!
Congrats on your invention, I can't wait to blow a color bubble myself and I am 51!
My 12-year old son will certainly love it, but may be mom won't like the stain until it goes out. But I have that planned out, I'll tell her I'll do some "magic" and in a few minutes the stain is gone! If I survive those minutes then I will be her hero!
Thank you, thank you, and good luck!
--Ernst B
What drives the colour change is probably just the co2 from the air making the slightly basic bubbles neutral. Interesting.. http://www.usedinversiontable.com
Its a funny thing.I would never have thought that ther was so much monye in bubbles.
To earn money you only need to know where ther are a demand and how to satisfy the demand.And of course one should never forget the FUNDINGS.TV
I can not believe that so much effort has been made to accomplish such a thing! But hey if it's fun then why not?! Enjoy. www.relativitycollapse.com www.patentceo.com
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