The interaction between floating particles

Extract

A quantitative study of the law of force between bubbles floating on a fluid has been made and the results exhibited in the form of a potential energy-distance curve. The main approximations made are that the inclination of the surface of the fluid is small (so that the equations for the surface become linear), and that the submerged portion of the bubble remains spherical. The latter assumption restricts the validity of the results to small bubbles of about 3·0 mm. diameter and less.

One object of the work was to determine the size of bubble which simulated most nearly a typical atomic interaction curve. This application arises in connexion with Prof. Bragg's ‘bubble’ model of crystal lattices. Exact simulation cannot be expected, for the bubble model is two-dimensional, and also does not exert forces analogous either to Coulomb repulsion or to the metallic bond. It can be shown, however, that the law of force between bubbles of a particular size is a remarkably close fit to the law of force between inert gas atoms, that is, to an interaction consisting of a van der Waals attraction and a short-range or ‘overlap’ repulsion. Fig. 4 illustrates this point. The two full curves are the energy-distance curves for krypton and argon atoms (plotted from Fowler, Statistical Mechanics, 2nd ed., Chapter x, Table 29). The circles mark the corresponding curve for bubbles with α = 1·0 (i.e. of diameter 3 mm. in soap solution). The units of energy and distance are chosen so as to bring the minimum of each curve to the point (1, − 50). It will be seen that the curves are remarkably similar over the range shown.