For the second night in a row I dropped in to a supermarket tonight to pick up some bubble bath, and for the second time I came away empty handed. After scouring the shelves in the bathroom aisle for what must have been nearly 10 minutes, I finally gave up and went and asked a guy if he could show me where the bubble bath was. He made me repeat myself and then led me to the condiments aisle where he pointed at some poppadoms. Awkward. A second attempt and he brought me to some scrubbing brushes and replacement mop-heads… I couldn’t see how that worked at all, so thanked him for his help and moved on.

Anyhow, the point of this story is not to laugh at some poor guy with bad English, rather it is to express outrage at the fact that bubble bath seems to have vanished from the shelves, to replaced by a thousand different scented body washes and shower gels… and this makes me really cross! I can’t actually remember where I got my last bottle from– obviously it wasn’t one of the two major supermarkets I just tried.

Bubble bath solution does not just make bathtime fun, it also makes bathtime more energy efficient by retaining the heat in the bath, and further it stops my bathroom walls from becoming sopping wet with condensation (from all the vapor freely escaping from the surface of the water).

Bubbles make great insulation, in the same way any foam does.

The same principle applies with hot coffee; a coffee with a layer on froth on top gives up its heat more slowly, mostly via radiation and conduction through the sides of the cup, rather than convection and evaporation, which is what occurs without the protecting layer. An added bonus in the case of hot drinks is that the foam layer has a dampening effect on the motion of the liquid underneath, so while I am always spilling my tea when simply crossing the room with it, with a nice creamy latte/cappucino I can pretty much run from the kitchen to my office without spilling a drop.

So remember this next time you imply someone is in some way a ponce for drinking a slightly fancy hot beverage; they may in fact be going with the most practical option.