Champagne Bubbles: Nucleation Site Chemistry (3D)

Champagne

Dissolved CO₂ 10.0 g/L

Temperature 6 °C

Glass Defects

Fiber/scratch site density 50

Wall roughness (pocket size) 1.5 µm

Click the glass wall to etch a new scratch (nucleation site) there. Drag to orbit, scroll to zoom.

Readout

Critical radius r*

— µm

Supersaturation ΔP

— atm

Active sites

0 / 0

Bubbles/s

0.0

How it works

Champagne is bottled under ~6 atm of dissolved CO₂ and poured into a glass at 1 atm, leaving it strongly supersaturated. Classical nucleation theory sets a critical radius r* = 2γ/ΔP below which an embryo bubble collapses under surface tension faster than gas can diffuse in. Homogeneous nucleation in the open liquid essentially never clears that barrier — real bubbles nucleate at pre-existing gas pockets trapped in cellulose fibers (from the glass-drying towel) or scratches on the glass, which act as ready-made embryos and only need a radius above r* to fire continuously.

Every defect site in this scene is scored by exp(−(r*/r_site)²): oversized pockets fire almost every frame, undersized ones stay silent — the same selectivity that makes only a handful of a real glass's fibers into active bubble trains. Growing bubbles gain radius by CO₂ diffusion (r ∝ √t) and rise under real Stokes drag, v = (2/9)g(ρ_liquid−ρ_gas)r²/μ, so each bubble visibly speeds up as it grows on its way to the surface.

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