A drop or droplet is a small column of liquid, bounded completely or almost completely by free surfaces. A drop may form when liquid accumulates at the end of a tube or other surface boundary, producing a hanging drop called a pendant drop. Drops may also be formed by the condensation of a vapor or by atomization of a larger mass of solid. Water vapor will condense into droplets depending on the temperature. The temperature at which droplets form is called the dew point.
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In this Dossier
Droplets in the context of Cloud
In meteorology, a cloud is an aerosol consisting of a visible mass of miniature liquid droplets, ice crystals, or other particles, suspended in the atmosphere of a planetary body or similar space. Water or various other chemicals may comprise the droplets and crystals. On Earth, clouds are formed as a result of saturation of the air when it is cooled to its dew point, or when it gains sufficient moisture, usually in the form of water vapor, from an adjacent source to raise the dew point to the ambient temperature.
Clouds are seen in the Earth's homosphere, which includes the troposphere, stratosphere, and mesosphere.Nephology is the science of clouds, which is undertaken in the cloud physics branch of meteorology. The World Meteorological Organization uses two methods of naming clouds in their respective layers of the homosphere, Latin and common name.
Droplets in the context of Dew
Dew is water in the form of droplets that appears on thin, exposed objects in the morning or evening due to condensation. As the exposed surface cools by radiating its heat, atmospheric moisture condenses at a rate greater than that at which it can evaporate, resulting in the formation of water droplets.
When temperatures are low enough, dew takes the form of ice, called frost.
Droplets in the context of Plateau–Rayleigh instability
In fluid dynamics, the Plateau–Rayleigh instability, often just called the Rayleigh instability, explains why and how a falling stream of fluid breaks up into smaller packets with the same total volume but less surface area per droplet. It is related to the Rayleigh–Taylor instability and is part of a greater branch of fluid dynamics concerned with fluid thread breakup. This fluid instability is exploited in the design of a particular type of ink jet technology whereby a jet of liquid is perturbed into a steady stream of droplets.
The driving force of the Plateau–Rayleigh instability is that liquids, by virtue of their surface tensions, tend to minimize their surface area. A considerable amount of work has been done recently on the final pinching profile by attacking it with self-similar solutions.