It's not even fussy. The easiest way I've seen to produce it is to fill a clear acrylic tube (perhaps a meter long; maybe 5 - 10 cm inner diameter) with your fluid, arrange an air bubble to release and rise in the tube, and drop the tube (held with its long axis up and down) from about 1 cm to hit the floor. The shock wave traveling upward from the impact can make *easily* visible sonoluminescence in the rising bubble. If you focus a video camera at infinity, and drop the tube through the camera's view, the light is very easily recorded.
I first saw this at an Acoustical Society of America meeting in Hawai'i a couple of years ago. The student (one of Putterman's) had a huge grin on his face, seeming to say, "Yes, I have the most kick-ass experiment ever, and you're jealous." And we all were. It was very simple, and very clever, and VERY effective.
/************************************
Down with categorical imperative!
flutzpah@yahoo.com
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________________________________
From: John Denker <jsd@av8n.com>
To: Forum for Physics Educators <phys-l@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, December 3, 2008 10:28:50 PM
Subject: Re: [Phys-l] pistol shrimp
On 12/03/2008 09:15 PM, Vern Lindberg wrote:
If it is sonluminexcence the claim is not a spoof.
Agreed!
Sonoluminescence is somewhat amazing, but it is quite
real. The result has been reproduced by literally
hundreds of people, because in some places the
experiment is done as an exercise in the intermediate
lab (physics majors in their junior year).
The basic equipment to do it is cheap. The procedure is
fussy, but once you've got it started it just keeps going
like the proverbial bunny. Of course if you want to make
incisive measurements on what's going on, it's going to
take some expensive optics and fancy electronics.
Think about the physics: Start with the equation for a
sound wave in spherical polar coordinates. It's singular
at the origin! It would be surprising if something weird
/didn't/ happen to a radially inbound wave. And then
surface tension helps run up the pressure even higher.
Also note that going from 300K to 30,000K is only a 100-to-1
compression ratio. That's not a particularly huge ratio.