Burst your bubble?

Burst your bubble?

bubbles, created when ocean waves break, can burst at the sea surface in two ways. The internal cavity of the bubble can collapse, creating "jet drops" of up to 100 microns in size that are ejected straight up in a line. Or a spray of much smaller droplets can form when the outer film of the bubble ruptures. Scientists, interested in learning about the liquid aerosols added to the air by ocean bubble-bursting, have focused their studies on jet drops, which, because of their size, small number and large ejection heights, are considerably easier to photograph in the laboratory than are "film drops."

Now, in the Jan. 15 Journal of Geophysical Research, F.J. Resch at Toulon University in La Garde, France, and colleagues describe a method using holography to examine the behavior and creation of film drops when the film cap of a bubble fragments. "Although optical holography is already a well-established technique for determining the size and spatial location of very small particles ..., it appears that this is the first time that the method has been applied to the study of a bubble breaking at liquid surface," the researchers write.