Examining a Peristaltic Pump Inside a Bubble-Blowing Toy
Nava Whiteford details what’s going on with a peristaltic pump inside a $6 bubble-blowing toy. The toy’s transparent holster allows the toy to be scrutinized without having to teardown or take apart the toy.
What particularly interested me was that it uses a peristaltic pump to push the soap mix toward what I call the “bubble formation aperture”. I’ve been reading about peristaltic pumps recently because they’re often used to deliver accurate volumes of liquid for scientific and medical applications.
The pump is named after the contractions the intestine makes to push food through your digestive tract and it operates in the same way. The gif to the left (shamelessly stolen from the wikipedia page), shows how fluid is pushed along.
This toy uses this exact mechanism, because it’s transparent you can see the pump operating without taking the toy apart which is also pretty neat and a nice learning aid. The gif below shows the toy operating and you can clearly see the pump working away.
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
