What makes bath bombs float

Bath bombs sink because the ingredients used may have greater bulk density than water, making your bath bombs sink quickly. Using ingredients with less bulk density, like corn starch, helps them float due to their lightweight.

They may also sink if your bath bombs did not dry entirely. Making sure your bath bombs float might not be very important to you on a personal level, but if you are in the bath bomb-making business, this may negatively affect your sales. But luckily, the solution is not as difficult as most may think. At least if you are willing to change your recipes.

The general purpose of a bath bomb is to make it float. However, if sinking is not a concern, you can add any type of ingredient to your bath bomb as you wish. But when it comes to customers, things might be a little different. For most people, floating bath bombs can be entertaining and relaxing. So if your bath bombs sink right away, it is doubtful that your customers will order from you again. Therefore, controlling everything from the recipe mixing to drying is crucial. Bath bombs sink when they have a higher density than the density of water.

This may be due to several factors:. Adding a greater quantity of liquid ingredients such as witch hazel or oil makes the bath bombs heavier. It is necessary to balance them by adding more amount of dry ingredients. A higher amount of moisture in your bath bomb adds to its weight and causes the bath bombs to sink quickly.

This means things like packing bath bombs too tightly in the mold may make it come out and dry as hard as a cannonball and causes them to sink. If your bath bombs do not dry fully, they will retain moisture, which makes them heavier. If you have a humidity problem, investing in a dehumidifier is probably your best option. Post a Comment. Part 2. So, pour yourself a cup of coffee and get comfortable because we are going to go deep.

As a reminder from Part 1 of this topic, there are 5 factors that contribute to whether a bath bomb sinks or floats:. Ingredients play a HUGE part in that mystery. In this post, we are going to talk to the type of ingredients used and their density. This concept is pretty much common sense.

This is where it might be a little heavy to understand, but once you do, a light bulb will go off in your head. First I need to give credit to Irene at Body Bonbon for being the first to put this information out there.

Once I read her post and applied what I had already knew, I was able to tweak my recipes to get a floating bath bomb. Two, the stubborn streak in me knew that floating bath bombs could be made without all those binders Lush does it and I wanted to figure out why.

Basically, the ingredients you use in your bath bomb have different densities during the creation process: particle, bulk, poured, wet, and tapped. If you think about it, we are basically taking several types of materials, mixing them together, wetting them, packing them into a mold, and then letting them dry. Each step in this process creates a different density. The trick is to understand the right combination to make a bath bomb float.

And although a single grain of citric acid may be denser than water, a group or a mass of those grains are less dense and weigh less due to the air pockets trapped in between those grains! Photo courtesy Slate For example, if you were to weigh a cup of sodium bicarbonate and a cup of citric acid, you will find the cup of citric acid weighs less.

This is because the sodium bicarbonate grains are smaller than the citric acid grains and; therefore, have less space in between each individual grain for air pockets. That way there was still some room if they were to expand a little as they dried.

Press the mixture down to make sure all the ingredients stick together. Give your foaming bath bombs time to dry. Mine only needed a good 2 hours until they were completely dry. Pop them out of their molds and they are ready to use! Just drop one in your bath water and watch it bubble up into a beautiful floating, foaming bath bomb!

With this easy recipe you can make bath bombs that fizz AND foam. All you need is the bubble bath from your bath room! Please leave a comment on the blog or share a photo on Pinterest. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam.

Learn how your comment data is processed. Can I incorporate Epsom salts into this recipe? This is really cool except the bubble bath in your amazon link has the SLS stuff in it. Is there an SLS-free bubble bath that you recommend for this? Is it necessary? Is there alternative? And what does it do for the bath bomb? Hi Rachel! Adding oil is not necessary for this recipe.

The bubble bath is also very fragrant already, so you won't need to add essential oils. You can replace witch hazel with another flower water or distilled water. In this recipe I would even suggest you leave it out. Hope this answers your questions! Hi, I made these a couple of days ago and the foam was lovely in the bath bomb. But the bomb itself was soft and very crumble, even though it was a bath bomb shape. Any ideas why this could have happened please. Hi Linda!

Next time I would try adding less bubble bath, the mixture probably reacted a little too early, creating a soft texture. I hope this helps! Sharing is caring! Jump to Tutorial. Contents hide.