Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Comment
. 2016 Jul 5;113(27):7294-5.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.1607893113. Epub 2016 Jun 24.

Role reversal: Liquid "Cheerios" on a solid sense each other

Anand Jagota  1
Affiliations
Comment

Role reversal: Liquid "Cheerios" on a solid sense each other

Anand Jagota. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. .
No abstract available

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The author declares no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
(A) Surface tension of a liquid drop on a compliant substrate causes significant deformation. The local shape at the contact line (i.e., the angles at which the three interfaces meet) is determined by balance of surface stresses, which is Neumann’s triangle. (B) Diagram of an isolated liquid drop, cutting inside the solid at the lower interface and outside the liquid at the outer interface (Laplace pressure not shown), showing that the net horizontal force is balanced. (C) When two drops approach each other, their surface shape changes, especially in the region between the two drops. (D) This shape change leads to an unbalanced in-plane force in response to which the drops move toward each other.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Comment on

  • Liquid drops attract or repel by the inverted Cheerios effect.
    Karpitschka S, Pandey A, Lubbers LA, Weijs JH, Botto L, Das S, Andreotti B, Snoeijer JH. Karpitschka S, et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2016 Jul 5;113(27):7403-7. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1601411113. Epub 2016 Jun 13. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2016. PMID: 27298348 Free PMC article.

References

    1. Vella D, Mahadevan L. The “Cheerios effect”. Am J Phys. 2005;73(9):817–825.
    1. Furst EM. Directing colloidal assembly at fluid interfaces. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2011;108(52):20853–20854. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Karpitschka S, et al. Liquid drops attract or repel by the inverted Cheerios effect. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2016;113:7403–7407. - PMC - PubMed
    1. deGennes P-G, Brochard-Wyart F, Quere D. Capillarity and Wetting Phenomena. Drops, Bubbles, Pearls, Waves. Springer Science + Business Media, Inc.; New York: 2002.
    1. Rowlinson JS, Widom B. Molecular Theory of Capillarity. Oxford Univ Press; New York: 1989.

LinkOut - more resources