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The recent work on the Marangoni Bursting, by L. Keiser, H. Bense, P. Colinet, J. Bico and E. Reyssat, has been selected to be on the cover of Physical Review Letters.
Abstract :
Adjusting the wetting properties of water through the addition of a miscible liquid is commonly used in a wide variety of industrial processes involving interfaces. We investigate experimentally the evolution of a drop of water and volatile alcohol deposited on a bath of oil : The drop spreads and spontaneously fragments
into a myriad of minute droplets whose size strongly depends on the initial concentration of alcohol. Marangoni flows induced by the evaporation of alcohol play a key role in the overall phenomenon. The intricate coupling of hydrodynamics, wetting, and evaporation is well captured by analytical scaling laws. Our scenario is confirmed by experiments involving other combinations of liquids that also lead to this fascinating phenomenon.
