Splash on an inverted wine glass

Hans Choe, Corey Hadley, Stuart Pratt, Sharon Roberson

For this photograph of a milk drop splash, a wine glass was first inverted. A black, convex metallic piece was then placed in the center of the glass' base. The convex shape provided a way for the milk to drain so that each drop splashed into a thin layer of liquid. This was necessary to produce the coronet with the fine droplet structure shown here. For details on how such photographs are taken, see the previous photo. For a photograph showing the pillar of milk that is produced when the convex piece isn't present, see the home page of High-Speed Imaging at NCSSM.

Note that the experimenters were able to use a shutter duration of only 0.6 seconds. This was possible because the milk dropping apparatus could be adjusted to release drops at a rate of about 1 to 2 per second. Thus, the camera shutter could be opened immediately after a splash and then would automatically close before the next splash. By keeping the shutter duration low, thermal noise in the image was keep to a minimum.

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