I'm just enought of a geek to think this is really cool....

[shack]

From popsci.com:

Hydrophobic materials have all kinds of practical applications, from creating surfaces that never have to be cleaned to making supertankers and container ships glide more efficiently through the water. But practical applications aside, this amazing video from Caltech -- showing the crazy, beautiful ways water droplets interact with a carbon nanotube array --might be mistaken for art rather than science.

Shot with a high-speed camera at various frame rates, the precisely controlled water droplets were launched at the nanotube arrays at different velocities and at different impact angles. The first segment of the video shows a simple 30 microliter droplet of water striking the array at two different speeds. At a slower 1.03 meters per second the droplet bounces off the nanotubes almost completely intact; at increased velocity it breaks into several smaller droplets and scatters in different directions.

But the really interesting segments of the video come later when the researchers start playing with the tilt and the shape of the nanotube array. We don’t want to spoil the climactic ending, but it involves two identical 14 microliter droplets rushing toward each other like star-crossed lovers racing across a field of tiny nanotubes. Who says science lacks romance?

[Keiko]

Pretty cool, geekster.

[mrbigbluelight]

A couple of questions I have:

When the experiment is performed with 2 droplets (total volume of 14uL), why were the dispensing tubes moved closer to each other (ie, further away from the walls of the parabola ?

Why were the shapes of the ramp not the same when using 2 droplets vs 1 droplet ?

Shack, is this some sort of secret campaign of yours to promote the superhydrophobic lifestyle ?

[ryanjoachim]

Yeah, I saw this on Friday. I thought it was extremely cool to watch how the droplets reacted and kept their shape.

[schwarcw]

I'm not amused. Taxpayers probably paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for the research and equipment.

[shack]

I'm not amused. Taxpayers probably paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for the research and equipment.

Remember Carl...some great scientific breakthroughs have been discovered by accident. I'd rather see tax dollars go for this sort of stuff rather than some of the billions that has been flushed down the govt toilets over the last couple of decades. There might actually be something learned from this...after all they are scientist...as opposed to politicians who spend billions and never learn anything.

[Toolfan66]

Remember Carl...some great scientific breakthroughs have been discovered by accident. I'd rather see tax dollars go for this sort of stuff rather than some of the billions that has been flushed down the govt toilets over the last couple of decades. There might actually be something learned from this...after all they are scientist...as opposed to politicians who spend billions and never learn anything.

I have to agree!!

Cool vid, and yes it was BAZINGA!!!

[Ricardo]

There's some really weird people here.

[Jstas]

There's some really weird people here.

You should talk! :p

[dorokusai]

Naturally I just pleasured myself.

[cnh]

Remember Carl...some great scientific breakthroughs have been discovered by accident. I'd rather see tax dollars go for this sort of stuff rather than some of the billions that has been flushed down the govt toilets over the last couple of decades. There might actually be something learned from this...after all they are scientist...as opposed to politicians who spend billions and never learn anything.

I have to agree here. A lot of my Chinese students were involved in experimental research aimed at fabricating and applying such materials. It was a revelation to me as I am not a Hard Scientist by training but was surrounded by cutting edge Scientists and their Grad Students for a year. I learned quite a bit from all that and saw a number of demonstrations. This is a very interesting area--those carbon atoms are so tightly packed that they cannot interact with the H20 surface structures.

The video is cool!

cnh

[Joe08867]

That was cool. I love stuff like this.