Cavitation Bubble Inside a Water Drop Under Zero-G Condition

This video presents an interesting experiment on a spark-generated cavitation bubbles inside water drops produced in microgravity. Highspeed visualizations disclosed unique effects of the spherical free surface. In particular, (1) collapsing bubbles generate two liquid jets escaping from the drop. (2) Shock waves induce a strong form of secondary cavitation due to the particular shock wave confinement. (3) Bubble lifetimes in drops are shorter than in extended volumes in remarkable agreement with a derived corrective terms for the Rayleigh-Plesset equation.