THEORYMERIDIAN

Why soap bubbles shimmer

Thin-film optics calculated spectrally; fluid motion and breakup illustrated with a reduced-order model.

Interactive companion v3.0

Three cases of the same bubble

Key settings and readouts

Analysis

Earth air

Plate I

Reflected spectrum

area-weighted average at mean thickness (display colour, exposure ×11, clipped)

Plate II

Thickness map

Plate III

Cross-section, top to bottom

What you are seeing

    Instrument settings

    More controls

    For the curious

    Equations, checks and notes

    Equations and model scope
    Validation: what is checked, and what is not

    Checks run in this page on the current settings. They separate analytic invariants (the code must satisfy them exactly), parameter-range checks (is the reduced-order model being used where it was built to apply?) and what has not been experimentally validated.

    Checks run automatically once the page has loaded.

    Not experimentally validated

      Display, performance and accessibility notes
      Credits, data sources and licences

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