nucleation...

looks funny but sucks.
and what does it have to do with vortices?
ok, that's still clearer to me than why it's got a volume energy term and why exactly this should be dependent on an external force when I can't even see what this energy is supposed to be doing...
oh, well it sounds reasonable but it's just waaaay tooooo hiiiiiiigh for me.

UPDATE
maybe it doesn't suck but I've answered most of the question and now feel braindead. I wanted to write this without consonants to emphasize, but noone could have read it. So now you'll just have to imagine that my brain's actually dead but that my fingers still know how to write. Makes sense, eh?
It's 1:40. Gotta sleep