system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Why doesn't a stream of bubbles form a long tube, 
rather than discrete, individual bubbles?

I was swimming today and it struck me how a stream of bubbles is just that: a line of discrete, individual "balls" of air. I assume it has something to do with the viscosity of water, and/or the speed at which the air is expelled from my lungs, and/or the speed at which air rises through water in Earth's gravity and atmospheric pressure, and I started wondering: given a sufficiently viscous liquid, and a steady rate of air expulsion (from lungs or from a machine), would the air form a single long tube-like bubble, rather than individual balls of air?
gpt
think of it like this: the water molecules want to *exclude* the air bubbles from their midst because the air has a different density. they *could* seclude them into a long tube, but a sphere has the smallest surface area to volume ratio, so it is far more stable, thus, they form tiny little bubbles instead of a tube.