Kicked drops

This paper is associated with a video winner of a 2017 APS/DFD Milton van Dyke Award for work presented at the DFD Gallery of Fluid Motion. The original video is available from the Gallery of Fluid Motion, https://doi.org/10.1103/APS.DFD.2017.GFM.V0080

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Figure 1

Chronophotography of a small water puddle deposited on a superhydrophobic plate subjected to an impulse. As the plate is accelerated upward, water spreads in a disk whose edges take off. Then, the liquid drop forms a truncated cone that eventually collapses, leading to the creation of a jet and satellite droplets. The scale bar is 5 mm. The video associated with these images is available at https://doi.org/10.1103/APS.DFD.2017.GFM.V0080

Figure 2

Transient shapes captured during the spreading (top row) and takeoff (bottom row) of water drops deposited on superhydrophobic curved pedestals. Increasingly complex shapes are created by depositing one drop (a), two drops separated by a repellent wire (b), and four drops, two on each side of the wire (c).