Gas bubble

A bubble is a of one substance in another, usually gas in a liquid. Due to the Marangoni effect, bubbles may remain intact when they reach the surface of the immersive substance.

Bubbles are seen in many places in everyday life, for example:

Bubbles form, and coalesce, into globular shapes, because those shapes are at a lower energy state. For the physics and chemistry behind it, see nucleation.

Humans can see bubbles because they have a different refractive index (IR) than the surrounding substance. For example, the IR of air is approximately 1.0003 and the IR of water is approximately 1.333. Snell's Law describes how electromagnetic waves change direction at the interface between two mediums with different IR; thus bubbles can be identified from the accompanying refraction and internal reflection even though both the immersed and immersing mediums are transparent.

The above explanation only holds for bubbles of one medium submerged in another medium (e.g. bubbles of gas in a soft drink); the volume of a membrane bubble (e.g. soap bubble) will not distort light very much, and one can only see a membrane bubble due to thin-film diffraction and reflection.

Nucleation can be intentionally induced, for example to create bubblegram.

In medical ultrasound imaging, small encapsulated bubbles called contrast agent are used to enhance the contrast.

In thermal inkjet printing, vapor bubbles are used as actuators. They are occasionally used in other microfluidics applications as actuators.

The violent collapse of bubbles (cavitation) near solid surfaces and the resulting impinging jet constitute the mechanism used in ultrasonic cleaning. The same effect, but on a larger scale, is used in focused energy weapons such as the bazooka and the torpedo. Pistol shrimp also use a collapsing cavitation bubble as a weapon. The same effect is used to treat kidney stones in a lithotripter. Marine mammals such as dolphins and whales use bubbles for entertainment or as hunting tools. Aerators cause dissolution of gas in the liquid by injecting bubbles.

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