A falling stream of water will naturally break up into droplets via the Plateau-Rayleigh instability. Those droplets are random, unless something like vibration of the nozzle sets their size. In Keep reading
Tag: droplets
Breaking Compound Ligaments
When pulled, viscous liquids stretch into ligaments that thin and then break into droplets. In this video, researchers investigate how these ligaments break up, depending on their composition. The initial Keep reading
Driven From Equilibrium
With the right application of force, liquids can take on shapes that defy our intuition. Here researchers sandwiched two immiscible oils between glass slides and applied an electric field. Because Keep reading
Spreading By Island
How does a droplet sinking through an immiscible liquid settle onto a surface? Conventional wisdom suggests that the settling drop will slowly squeeze the ambient fluid film out of the Keep reading
Liquid Umbrellas
Two well-timed and properly aligned droplets combine to create these umbrella-like fluid sculptures. The initial drop creates a jet that shoots upward. When the second drop hits that jet, it Keep reading
Sliding Along
Robust, self-cleaning surfaces are a holy grail for many engineers, but they’re tough to achieve. One necessary ingredient for a self-cleaning surface is the ability to shed water, which is Keep reading
Taking A Turn
Water droplets immersed in a mixture of oil and surfactants will move about, propelled by the Marangoni effect. Surfactant molecules congregate along the interface between the water and oil, but Keep reading
Falling Beads
Liquids flowing down a fiber can form bead-like droplets that may sit symmetrically (a) or asymmetrically (b) on the fiber. In general, the asymmetric droplets appear as surface tension increases Keep reading
Acidic Sea Spray
As waves crash and break, they generate a spray of droplets — known as aerosols — that make their way into the atmosphere. Researchers investigated the chemistry of these aerosol Keep reading
Gathering Droplets
In deserts around the world, plants have adapted to collect as much moisture as they can. Geometry aids them in this endeavor because droplets on the tip of a cone Keep reading