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Water-Drop Photography
Catch the momentary beauty of a water drop falling into a pool.
Here you can select and photograph a precise moment—to within a millisecond—as a water droplet falls into a small pool of water. Freezing the action reveals both the complexity and the beauty of fluid motion.
What's going on?
The fantastic shapes and patterns you can see in this exhibit are largely due to the strong cohesive forces between water molecules, also known as surface tension.
Water molecules are polar, that is, the electric charges within them are arranged so that each molecule has a positive and a negative side. This polarity makes water molecules tend to stick strongly to one another, causing water droplets to form spheres and water surfaces to ripple as if covered in a skin of fabric.
Harold Edgerton, Milk Drop Coronet. Photo: 1957, © 2010 MIT. Courtesy of MIT Museum. (click image to enlarge)
Resources
“Splash! Droplets of Water and Milk Photographed by Corrie White Using a Macro Lens.” The Telegraph. © of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2018.
More to explore
Related exhibits
This web project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services [MA-30-16-0175-16].
