A CLOCK made of bubbles is the brainchild of Fred Romberg of the California
Institute of Technology. Romberg got the idea after watching the bubbles in a
glass of soda. 鈥淚 thought that if I could control the motion of the bubbles, I
could start making letters, numbers and other shapes with them.鈥�
Romberg has now built a prototype clock to demonstrate the idea. Two sheets
of glass make the front and back of a thin tank filled with baby oil. A row of
tiny valves along the bottom releases bubbles of dye into the oil. Because the
dye is less dense than baby oil and doesn鈥檛 mix with it, the bubbles rise slowly
to the top of the tank, where the dye can be collected and recycled.
By opening the valves in a sequence carefully determined by a microchip,
Romberg is able to produce formations of bubbles that show a clock face in
either digital or analogue form. The display rises to the top of the tank and
then the next set of bubbles is released.
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鈥淚t鈥檚 a gimmick,鈥� says Peter Church, a manager at the Technology Innovation
Centre at the University of Central England in Birmingham. 鈥淏ut I鈥檓 sure motor
cars seemed a gimmick once.鈥�