How soap bubbles freeze.

S Farzad Ahmadi, Saurabh Nath, Christian M Kingett, Pengtao Yue, Jonathan B Boreyko

Abstract read

In one paragraph

Article in Nature communications, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it

0cells of the map it votes in

2citing papers in PubMed

–field-weighted citation impact

1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

2 citing papers in PubMed.

How surface charges affect interdroplet freezing.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025
Article
Inkjet printing-based fabrication of microscale 3D ice structures.Microsystems & nanoengineering · 2020
Article

4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

5 authors.

S Farzad AhmadiDepartment of Biomedical Engineering and Mechanics, Virginia Tech, 495 Old Turner Street, 222 Norris Hall, Blacksburg, VA, 24061, USA.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8622-1434

Saurabh NathDepartment of Biomedical Engineering and Mechanics, Virginia Tech, 495 Old Turner Street, 222 Norris Hall, Blacksburg, VA, 24061, USA.

Christian M KingettDepartment of Biomedical Engineering and Mechanics, Virginia Tech, 495 Old Turner Street, 222 Norris Hall, Blacksburg, VA, 24061, USA.

Pengtao YueDepartment of Mathematics, Virginia Tech, 225 Stanger Street, 460 McBryde Hall, Blacksburg, VA, 24061, USA.

Jonathan B BoreykoDepartment of Biomedical Engineering and Mechanics, Virginia Tech, 495 Old Turner Street, 222 Norris Hall, Blacksburg, VA, 24061, USA. boreyko@vt.edu.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0344-5868

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Droplets or puddles tend to freeze from the propagation of a single freeze front. In contrast, videographers have shown that as soap bubbles freeze, a plethora of growing ice crystals can swirl around in a beautiful effect visually reminiscent of a snow globe. However, the underlying physics of how bubbles freeze has not been studied. Here, we characterize the physics of soap bubbles freezing on an icy substrate and reveal two distinct modes of freezing. The first mode, occurring for isothermally supercooled bubbles, generates a strong Marangoni flow that entrains ice crystals to produce the aforementioned snow globe effect. The second mode occurs when using a cold stage in a warm ambient, resulting in a bottom-up freeze front that eventually halts due to poor conduction along the bubble. Blending experiments, scaling analysis, and numerical methods, the dynamics of the freeze fronts and Marangoni flows are characterized.

Identifiers

PMID31213604

DOI10.1038/s41467-019-10021-6

PMCPMC6582157

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LicenceCC BY

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Registered trials

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.