Powerful fans blow tiny soap bubbles into the audience by the thousands. Little kids giggle; bigger kids scream. And like a magician, 27-year-old Melody Yang pulls out her wands.

From his numerous observations and 80-odd bubble contraptions, Plateau came to some universal conclusions about bubble membranes and what they represented in terms of something mathematicians call ...

In 1672, Robert Hooke observed that bubbles blown through a glass tube are clear white, but as the soap film thins, "all the colors of the rainbow" appear on the surface.