area

The oil spill is still in the news (sadly). One thing that keeps coming up is the speed that the oil bubbles rise to the surface. This is important in different oil-capture methods. The common statement is that smaller bubbles of oil can take quite a long time to reach the surface and larger bubbles can take about 2 days. This is one of those cases where things do not scale quite the same. Suppose there is a spherical oil bubble rising at a constant speed. Here is a force diagram for such a bubble: If this drop is going at a constant speed, then all these forces have to add up to the…