Monitoring foam coarsening using a computer optical mouse as a dynamic laser speckle measurement sensor

In this paper, we present an experimental approach to track coarsening process of foam using a computer optical mouse as a dynamic laser speckle measurement sensor. The dynamics of foam coarsening and rearrangement events cause changes in the intensity of laser speckle backscattered from the foam. A strong negative correlation between the average speed of the cursor and the evolution of bubble diameter was found. We used microscopic images to demonstrate that decrease in speed is related to increase in bubble size. The proposed set-up is not very expensive, is highly portable and can be used in laboratory measurements of dynamics in other kinds of opaque materials.