Why do bubbles make a sound?

The air pressure inside the (intact) bubble is larger than in the surrounding. This pressure difference is called Laplace pressure and is caused by the surface tension between the soap film and the air. When the bubble pops the compressed air expands, thus creating a pressure wave, which you ultimately hear as the typical popping sound.


This page quotes the pressure inside a soap bubble as $\frac {4\gamma }R$, where $\gamma$ is the surface tension, about $25\text { dyne}/\text{cm }$ for soapy water, and $R$ is the radius of the bubble. For $R=1$ cm, the pressure is then $100 \text { dyne}/\text{cm}^2 = 10 \text{ Pa}$. This is released when the bubble pops. It doesn't seem like much with the atmosphere being $101 \text{kPa}$ but it doesn't take much.


The surface formed by the bubble is such that its energy is minimized. Since increasing the interface between a liquid and air increases its energy due to surface tension, the bubble tends to reduce its radius, which implies that the pressure inside it must be higher than the pressure outside, and following this reasoning you may also get a quantitative result that relates this pressure difference with the principal curvatures of the interface (Laplace equation). Since the pressure is higher inside the bubble, if the bubble bursts, energy in the form of sound will be propagated.