ScienceDaily (June 13, 2010) — On the surface of things, how a bubble bursts may seem to be a simple, unremarkable event. In the June 10th issue ofNature, engineers at Harvard report just the opposite, having uncovered the beautifully complex physics behind rupturing bubbles.
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Instead of simply vanishing, a large bubble disperses into a ring of smaller bubbles. The finding could be appropriately called an advance in "pop" science.
Lead author James C. Bird, a graduate student at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), and his colleagues believe they have stumbled upon a universal behavior in how bubbles pop that holds as true for suds in a sink as it does for foam in the ocean.
"In order to minimize surface area, a bubble will be nearly hemispherical when it is in contact with a solid or liquid interface," explains Bird. "We found that when these hemispherical bubbles pop, there is a two step process that can create a ring of smaller bubbles. While the resulting smaller bubbles have long been seen, until now the 'how' has never been reported in the literature."
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