Bubble of an idea leads to new research on freezingScientific inquiry often begins with the &ldq

Bubble of an idea leads to new research on freezing

Scientific inquiry often begins with the “why.”
Without expecting to do more than answer a question posed by a YouTube video, Virginia Tech researchers may have changed how people think about the process of freezing.
Lead Virginia Tech researcher Jonathan Boreyko, an assistant professor in mechanical engineering in the College of Engineering, and his student researchers were watching a YouTube video of a soap bubble freezing. The mesmerizing sight of ice crystals floating around the bubble made the engineers wonder what caused the phenomenon.
Boreyko and student researchers Farzad Ahmadi and Saurabh Nath, both graduate students in engineering mechanics, and Christian Kingett, an undergraduate researcher in engineering science and mechanics who graduated in 2019, conducted literature research and found that no one had ever studied how soap films or bubbles freeze.
The results of the team’s query, which began as a simple “why,” has been published in the journal Nature Communications, explaining the physics behind what causes the ice crystals jump up into the bubble and swirl around, thus changing perceptions about the process of freezing.