物理学家终于发现了肥皂泡变大的秘密

物理学家终于发现了肥皂泡变大的秘密

With the right patience and finesse, you can get soap bubbles to grow to enormous sizes. At their most gigantic, with surface areas approaching 100 metres squared (over 1,000 square feet), these globules can get large enough to hold entire cars within their fragile grasp.

只要有足够的耐心和技巧，你就能让肥皂泡变得很大。最大表面积可以接近100平方米(超过1000平方英尺)，足以将整个汽车都控制在其脆弱的包裹范围内。

Stretched out to extreme lengths, a bubble's microscopically thin walls will begin to glisten like a rainbow, which raises the question: how can something just a few microns thick, roughly as wide as a wavelength of light, exist without exploding?

当气泡延伸到极端长度时，气泡的薄壁将开始像彩虹一样闪闪发光，这就出现了一个问题：为什么只有几微米厚的东西，大约与一波长的光一样宽的物体如何能在不爆炸的情况下存在?

After more than a year of research, physicists at Emory University have figured out what makes the perfect gigantic bubble so stable.

经过一年多的研究，埃默里大学的物理学家们，已经找到了使完美的巨型泡沫如此稳定的原因。

The absolute Goldilocks of bubble mixtures, they say, is one that gives a bit of stretch, allowing the fluid to flow a little, but not too much that it runs amok.

他们说，泡沫混合物的绝对“适居性”是一种能让液体稍稍流动，但又不会太过泛滥的混合物。

"We basically started making bubbles and popping them, and recorded the speed and dynamics of that process," says physicist Justin Burton.

物理学家贾斯汀·伯顿说:“我们基本上是先制造气泡，然后把它们弄爆，然后记录下这个过程的速度和动态。”

"Focusing on a fluid at its most violent moments can tell you a lot about its underlying physics."

“关注流体最剧烈的时刻，可以让你了解它的许多基本物理特性。”

Time and time again, the best bubbles came from solutions of water and soap that also contained polymers - a substance with a long chain of repeating molecules, usually found in lubricants.

一次又一次，最好的泡泡来自于含有聚合物的水和肥皂溶液，聚合物是一种长链重复分子的物质，通常存在于润滑油中。

With their long strands tangling together, Burton says polymers can act like a 'hairball' in soap solution, stopping the walls from breaking apart.

伯顿说，当聚合物的长链缠绕在一起时，聚合物在肥皂溶液中的作用就像一个“毛球”，可以阻止墙壁破裂。

"Polymers of different sizes become even more entangled than single-sized polymers, strengthening the elasticity of the film," explains Burton.

伯顿解释说：“不同尺寸的聚合物比单一尺寸的聚合物更容易缠结，增强了薄膜的弹性。”。

"That's a fundamental physics discovery."

“这是一个基本的物理发现。”

The study was published in Physical Review Fluids.

这项研究发表在《物理评论》杂志上。