Can soap films be used as models for mortality studies?

Abstract

We report studies of the life expectancy of sets of parallel liquid films made from surfactant solution and contained in cylindrical perspex tubes. The tubes are sealed at the bottom and vertically placed. From our analysis of the life-time data of over 2200 such films we find that this synthetic system shows characteristics of the statistics of human mortality. An infant or wear-in phase where the mortality decreases followed by an ageing phase where the mortality increases broadly in line with the law of Gompertz. Ensembles of soap films thus offer themselves as a unique and easily accessible experimental system for the study of failure/mortality statistics with applications to human data.