The Hydroxyl Group and Soap Film Structure

Abstract

IN view of the well-known ‘stabilising’ effect of glycerin on soap solutions, it is not surprising to find that the elastic—recoil of aqueous ammonium oleate—demonstrated by Hatschek at a Royal Institution discourse in 1927¹—is destroyed by a small addition of glycerin: the resulting solution having no obvious anomalous viscosity. (Hatschek supported a hollow glass cylinder on vertical pivots in a quarter per cent solution of ammonium oleate: when this cylinder was spun by the finger and thumb, it rotated for a few seconds, but then, after stopping, slowly returned in the opposite direction, as if by a coiled-up spring.)