Astronaut Don Pettit--inventor of the Zero-G Coffee Cup--plays with free-floating, head-sized water bubbles on the International Space Station. Make sure you stick around for the third experiment, where Pettit sticks an antacid tablet into one of the bubbles.
Thumbnail image courtesy Flickr user delicate genius, via CC.
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My god.... it's full of BUBBLES!
Might as well go back to bed, I've no plans to go into orbit and I'm not likely to see anything cooler than that here on earth. I wonder how fire would react in zero g. Like would a burning match still have the gradual change from orange to yellow at the top? If there's no gravity would it just spray out in all directions?
a quick check proves that the great gazoogle knows the answer to this riddle.
the other one that came up in the list afterwards was rather cool as well, but ludicrously dangerous carrying liquid nitrogen through a crowd with it in an open bowl!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCtdW_BDuVI
Where are the monkeys? I demand space monkeys with my space bubbles!
I'm pretty sure I saw Jesus's face in the antacid experiment. Can we sell it on e-bay?
manicbassmen: I'd disagree that it was ludicrously dangerous. You can spill LN2 on your hand without ill effect. I used to work in a science museum where I did a liquid nitrogen demo. After freezing and shattering various things, I would spill some on my hand and then bang my hand against a table. It IS something you need to be careful with (I did almost get frostbite doing something else that was stupid) but carrying it in an open container really isn't that bad. A little spill on your shoes or pants isn't going to do anything because it will boil away pretty much instantly.
mdh: thanks, did just that, then I made good on my intentions to go back to bed.
debg - that wasn't Jesus it was Mr. Bill
Why did the two large bipolar gas bubbles in the antacid experiment settle in the camera's orientation of up and down? Is this an effect of the wire ring holding the water bubble in place, a gravitational effect, or something else?
I realize that the large gas bubbles are as far away from each other as possible because the smaller gas bubbles are pushing on the large gas bubbles equally, and the two large gas bubbles equalize those forces by being at opposite ends. But that doesn't explain the orientation of those two large gas bubbles.
My bet is on the wire ring, as its gas bubble seems to be confined by the location of the wire relative to the entire water bubble. Maybe the wire deforms the inner surface of the water bubble, creating a boundary that forms a rim where the gas bubble can sit and not keep getting pushed around the water bubble. So small gas bubbles get confined there, as do the larger gas bubbles they form, until you've got two large bubbles at opposite ends.
Somebody tell NASA that I need them to go back into orbit and redo the experiment so I can verify my hypothesis.
@toolbag: Yes. The experiment was done in the 60s or 70s... the flame radiates outwards. Eventually, it extinguishes.
If by "ludicrously dangerous" you meant "perfectly safe," then sure. Liquid nitrogen is probably THE example of a harmless chemical that looks scary. If the guy carrying the bowl tossed it onto the crowd instead, no one would have been hurt except by stampede. You need to be Darwin Award stupid to be seriously injured by that much of the stuff.
I love how the technical vocabulary comes out at the beginning of the video, with elastic reactions, and mass transfer.
but devolves into bubbles eating bubbles and bubble war.
love the video, wish I was up there.
As i wrote to my daughter, I am a typical left hander as I believe , well can only speak for myself, that these winders are there in the air we breathe.Sometimes science tests things that have no useful application. Me? I love the miracles out there that most people don't see are miraculous!This was why I got bored in Chemistry classes and ended uo with a fascination for people watching, body language and etymology.I observe and after enough observation, I conclude. Same with listening, either to other languages or English and music.. if it's clear to me , then it's Ok for me. If I can 'see' into the mind of the creator of music from hearing his/her, usually his , i'm happy.
I know he's an astronaut and therefore lethally cool by definition, but I have to say, NEEEEERRRRRRRRDDDDD!
I don't know if it's the slight congested-sounding lisp, which evoke nerdly asthma and corrective dental appliances, or the little quiver of excitement that comes into his voice when he sees a really cool "kinetic mass transfer" or "heterogeneouth nucleation." But he's really pegging the needle on the nerdometer.
NERD! ;)
Very cool video.
I want to see them shoot a drop of food coloring into it like they did the puff of air.
Man, I got my geek on for a good week. Semiotix, you hit on the head o' the nail. THe monotonous prosidy was broken only by those words, such as the ones you describe, I kind of heard the excitement when he said antipoidal. When he said, "a delightful interplay of both surface and body waves here" it made me feel all funny inside.
But, I was really, REALLY crappy at Newtonian physics. Can someone 'splain to me what provokes the kinetic mass transfer (is that M1m1=M2m2?) with the air bubble? You would think it would prefer to continue to spin around the inner surface of the inner bubble rather than going bonkers (literally), I mean, I know I would.
but, but, but in Golden Eye the guy snap freezes! SNAP FREEZES!
and he was invincible too, life sucks.
OK, I totally made the equation up (as I am sure 33 1/3 of the readers know). BUT still, why?
@DarwinSurvivor
Don Pettit did exactly that in another Saturday Morning Science video. There is a great YouTube video him injecting food coloring into water in zero-g at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkUcYabieEM
Beautiful! More, please!
Amazing! Makes me think of the zero-g oceans and rain in Karl Schroeder's Virga series, especially the "flood" in the third book.