Friday 1 May 2020

fluid dynamics - Why do liquids separate in space with no gravity?


I've seen videos of people in space (on ISS) who squeeze a bottle or something and liquid comes out, it then separates into smaller balls.



Why is this surely it should stay pretty much together because on ISS there's no gravity from the Earth (or more precisely: it is cancelled by the centrifugal force), so the liquid should attract itself?



Answer



Because liquids, water in particular have a high surface tension.


For this reason blobs of water tend to become spherical. Now, given that it starts as an elongated stream (say because it's pushed out of a bottle), the stream breaks up in different pseudo-spherical bubbles; if an astronaut were to pour water very, very slowly and carefully he could create a single spherical blob.


The concept is not dissimilar to drops, but without the gravity.


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