Saturday, September 3, 2011

Why are water drops spherical ???

The water droplet's 'spherical shape ensures that few water molecules will be on the outside', because this is the shape for which the ratio of the surface area to the volume is smallest. Water molecules prefer to be on the inside, entirely surrounded by their own kind, for a similar reason to that which drives Emperor penguins to form compact huddles in the winter - because it conserves energy to transfer a water molecule from the inside of the droplet to its surface. The fewer molecules that have to undergo this process, the happier the droplet will be.

No comments:

Post a Comment