WHEN bubbles burst on the surface of thick liquids they don’t collapse into a
puddle, they wrinkle up in a predictable, creased pattern. The insight could
help fashion designers deal with a geometric quandary—how to make flat
cloth fit the rounded human body.
Rava da Silveira and a team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
studied the effect of a bubble of air sitting atop silicone oil, like a soap
bubble sits on bathwater. They punctured the top of a centimetre-sized bubble
with a needle and watched its collapse with a high-speed camera, recording a
radial ripple pattern forming…
