The investigation of the nucleation using microelectrodes: II. The second moment of the times of birth of the first nucleus

Abstract We characterise the fluctuations in the observation of the first passage times for the formation of the first nucleus by the variance of the observations. It is shown that the variance is much smaller than that predicted on the basis of the presently accepted approach which has been used to explain nucleation phenomena; this effect is regarded as an indication that the thermal noise in the interfacial region is much lower than expected.