Bursting of gas bubbles at a free surface, a commonly occuring phenomena, is the source of fascinating,intriguing and unknown physics. The image sequence shows the main stages of collapse of a bubble of radius 2.15 mm. The event took 8 milli seconds to complete with the intervals between successive images being 0.25 milli sec, 0.75 ms, 0.75 ms, 1.25 ms and 3 ms. The bubble consists of a top thin film and a bottom cavity. After the thin film ruptures due to draining of fluid from the film, an unstable cavity is formed that collapses in a time period of milliseconds. The high energy focussing due to the collapse of millimeter sized bubbles results in jets with velocities of the order of 10m/s. Understanding the dynamics of this collapse and energy focussing could lead to, among many, new applications in printing, explosives, painless injections etc. This mechanism also determines to a large extent the rate of transfer of moisture to atmosphere from the ocean and the sound of rain.

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Posted by Dr. A. P. Baburaj.