Acidic Aerosols

As ocean waves crash, they generate aerosols — tiny liquid and solid particulates — that interact with the atmosphere. Curious about the chemistry of these tiny drops, researchers set out to measure their acidity. That’s easier said than done. Over time, aerosol droplets acidify as they interact with acidic gases in the atmosphere and capturing fresh aerosols in the field is next to impossible.

To tackle these challenges, researchers instead moved the aerosols to the laboratory, filling a wave channel with seawater and agitating it to generate aerosols they could then measure. They found that the smallest aerosols become a million times more acidic than the bulk ocean in only two minutes! Find out more about their experiment and its implications over at Physics Today. (Image credit: E. Jepsen; research credit: K. Angle et al.)