Shape
Dew drops assumes the shape that minimizes the sum of its gravitational energy and its surface tension. Surface tension is expressed as force per unit length. Water has a surface tension of 0.072 N/m.
Man's life is like a drop of dew on a leaf.The shape of a dew drop cannot be described by a closed form mathematical function. The governing differential equations do not have a closed form solution, so must be integrated numerically to trace the profile of a drop (cf. The profile of a dew drop).
- Socrates
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| A drop of dew cupped in the leaf of the common garden nasturtium. |
The person who doesn't scatter the morning dew will not comb gray hairs.Refraction
- Hunter S. Thompson
The term refraction describes the deflection of light that occurs when light waves travel through a change in medium (e.g., from air to water). Water droplets refract light like a lens.
When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with other stars all singing and shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty.
- Travels in Alaska by John Muir, 1915, chapter 1, page 5.
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| Refraction Photograph by Markus Reugels |
REFERENCES
- Muir, John, Travels in Alaska, 1915.
- Feredoon Behroozi, Hilliard K. Macomber, Jack A. Dostal, Cyrus H. Behroozi, and Brian K. Lambert, The profile of a dew drop, American Journal of Physics. September 1996, Volume 64, Issue 9, pp. 1120.
- Liquid Art by Markus Reugels.
- Liquid Sculptures. Pictures of drops.
