Berkeley Fluids Seminar
University of California, Berkeley
Bring your lunch and enjoy learning about fluids!
May 19, 2014
Dr. Adrien Benusiglio (Medicine, Stanford)
Dancing droplets
Taken in pure form, water and propylene glycol (PG) spread on corona treated glass, but when mixed they surprisingly form finite-size droplets. Also, when these binary droplets of difference concentrations are deposited together, they exhibit a remarkable chaotic dance. Looking closely at a pair of droplets we observe that they attract each other over long distances, even if they are of the same concentration. When in contact, droplets of same concentration merge, and droplets of different concentration enter a prolonged chase. We detail the mechanisms of these observations, related to evaporation-induced Marangoni flows and vapor gradients, and propose elegant fuidic devices using these phenomena.
Contributors: Adrien Benusiglio, Nate Cira, Manu Prakash, Bio-engineering, Stanford University