Equilibrium and mutual attraction or repulsion of objects supported by surface tension (Q4353775)

This paper addresses phenomena of classical interest and importance, that have been repeatedly observed in the popular literature, but seem not previously to have been discussed in a quantitative way. The authors establish procedures for determining the hydrostatic forces acting on solid objects in equilibrium on a liquid surface, and subject to the actions of surface tension and of hydrostatic pressure. They establish general relations applicable to equilibrium configurations, and solve the equations obtained by linearizing for small deflections. As the authors note and was known already to Laplace, linearization is in general not suitable for capillarity problems; however, the particular problems considered here lead in cases of significant interest to small deflections, and thus such procedures can be used to good effect. The linearizations are justified by direct comparison of results in the one-dimensional case, for which the solution of the full equations can be found explicitly. The authors consider a number of examples of special interest, for which they obtain some striking results. Some of these results are tested experimentally, with reasonably good agreement. The investigation appears to have been carried out with great care and with scrupulous attention to detail. For the most part the exposition is well organized and clearly written, however some points in the presentation seemed to the reviewer sketchy and were difficult for him to follow.