liquid can be used as well additionally other gases can be employed to form bubbles in situations where the liquid is sensitive to oxygen from eq 1 hereinabove it is seen that the resonance frequency of a bubble is related to u03b3 which is the ratio of the specific heat of the gas at constant pressure to the specific heat thereof at constant volume the value of which depends on the nature of the gas for example for monotomic gases u03b3 1 67 for diatomic gases u03b3 1 41 while for polyatomic gases u03b3 1 3 therefore the resonant frequency of the bubble will depend on the gas being used for its generation the terminal velocity and the shape oscillation frequency for the bubble are not affected by the choice of gas typically when bubbles are generated using cavitation the vapor inside the bubble will be the vapor of the liquid that is cavitating however if gas is dissolved in the liquid a portion of this gas may enter the bubble in fact dissolved gases lower the threshold for cavitation additionally under certain circumstances the identity of the dissolved gas can be determined from the resonance frequency as long as a consistent set of bubble measurements is used in the analysis in accordance with the present invention that is measurements taken using either the cavitation method or the syringe method for bubble formation the above mentioned properties of the liquid can be determined although analytic algorithms are provided hereinbelow for extracting or monitoring the desired characteristics of the liquid from the three measured quantities more general versions of equations 1 u2013 4 can be parametrically solved numerically.