Spheres are a special shape; they provide the smallest possible surface area necessary to contain a given volume. And since surface tension tries to minimize surface energy by reducing the Keep reading
Tag: surface energy
Jumping Droplets
From butterfly wings to lotus leaves, many surfaces in nature are shaped to repel water. This typically means roughness on the scale of tens of nanometers, which helps trap air Keep reading
Leaping Droplets
Many fungi use coalescing water droplets to launch and spread their spores. The process is recreated in the laboratory in the animation above. Initially, there is a small spherical drop Keep reading
Jumping Droplets
When droplets on a superhydrophobic surface coalesce with one another, they jump. Individually, each drop has a surface energy that depends on its size. When two smaller droplets coalesce into a larger drop, Keep reading