2020 was certainly a strange year, and I confess that I mostly want to congratulate all of us for making it through and then look forward to a better, happier, Keep reading
Tag: soap bubbles
The Colors of a Thin Film
Soap bubbles and other thin films are colorful thanks to wave interference across their tiny thickness, but you may have noticed that only some colors appear. Others, like red, seem Keep reading
Spinning Bubbles
Fluid dynamics is largely about figuring out the relationship between forces. For a soap bubble sitting still, that’s primarily the effect of gravity, which makes the fluid in the soap film drain downward, and Keep reading
Branching Light with Soap Bubbles
By shining laser light through soap bubbles, researchers have demonstrated branching flow in light for the first time. This branching occurs when waves travel through a disordered medium where the Keep reading
Listening to a Bubble’s Pop
Sound is an important aspect of many flows, from the scream of a rocket engine to the hum of electrical wires vibrating in the wind. Critically, those sounds carry important Keep reading
Perfecting Giant Bubbles
Whether young or old, everyone enjoys blowing soap bubbles, and the bigger the bubble, the more impressive it is. Researchers have been on a quest to discover how bubbles can Keep reading
Freezing Bubbles
Scientists have observed distinctive differences in the way soap bubbles freeze depending on their environment. If a bubble is surrounded by room temperature air but placed on a cold surface (top), it Keep reading
Explosive Flame Fronts
Though they look like jellyfish or space creatures, these images from photographer Linden Gledhill are actually explosions. What you’re seeing is the detonation of hydrogen gas with oxygen. The teal Keep reading
Making Giant Soap Bubbles
Making soap bubbles is fun, but there’s something about gigantic soap bubbles that brings out the child in everyone. The world’s largest freestanding soap bubble had more than 100 square meters of Keep reading
Foam Collapse
Introduce the right additive and the bubble arrays in foam will collapse catastrophically. What you see above is high-speed video of a quasi-two-dimensional soap bubble foam collapsing. There are two Keep reading