It has been discovered that bubbles can be nucleated in a metastable liquid (superheated, supersaturated with dissolved gas, or under hydrostatic tension) by gently rubbing together two solid surfaces immersed in the liquid. The mechanism of the effect is still being investigated, but some interesting results have already been obtained. These have implications in the theory of cavitation and in the parallel phenomenon of the tribonucleation of crystals.
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Alan T. J. Hayward (1967) studied this question.
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