On Mon, 09 Jan 2006 18:51:41 GMT, Lobster
wrote:


Thanks for the replies.

Well, she's fascinated by this thing and has singlehandedly trebled our
gas consumption since Xmas by continually boiling up the bloody thing.

Anyway - interestingly I note that when cold, the sachet has lots of
small bubbles of varying sizes (down to the limits of my vision) but
they don't seem to act as nuclei for crystals to form.

They are stable bubbles

We've duly tried
dropping the thing on the floor and bopping it smartlye with a wooden
spoon, but nothing seems to kick it off except the clicker!


I bet it's cavitation that does it. "Bubbles" full of vacuum form as
the wavefront passes through the material and then subsequently
collapse releasing a bit of energy but in a tiny volume

= high energy density.

DG