What happens when you place a drop of water on a hot surface that is more than 250 degrees Celsius? You might expect the water to boil almost instantly, but something else happens! As the water boils, a thin layer of water vapour forms in between the droplet and the surface. This slows down the rate of boiling and results in a droplet hovering just about 0.2mm from the surface.
The heat is now transferred through the thin vapour layer and this is known as film boiling. This effect of a hovering droplet that can skitter around the surface with low friction is known as the Leidenfrost effect. You can replicate this in everyday life by simply placing small amounts of water in a heated pan. One of the interesting applications is that by constructing a set of "stairs", we can make this water droplet climb upwards against gravity!
The droplet slides downwards on the slanted parts of the ramp, while the boiling effect helps it climb over the steps in the ratchet-like structure. The structure, when optimized, can climb up to 15 degree angles.
Below are some more links regarding this cool effect:
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2006/03/20/science/20060321_SCI_ILLUS.html
This gem of a post was discovered by the OCD Team!
Reply to this comment if you accept, and are willing to let us promote your gem of a post! By accepting this, you have a chance to receive extra rewards and one of your photos in this article will be used on our compilation post!
You can follow @ocd – learn more about the project and see other Gems! We strive for transparency.
I'm mostly curating in #science and am always glad to see quality posts like yours peeking out between the garbage and plagiarism!
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Sure! It will be great if you will promote or use the contents of my post! Love to see someone share my interest in science!
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Great! I'll nominate it Wednesday, already chose a nomination for today and tomorrow. If your post gets chosen it will appear in the daily @ocd post.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
You've been UpVoted via the UpVote Experiment 002 Bot. Depending on my VP & the price of STEEM you should get a $.01-$.03 for your trouble.
Read more about this experiment here.
Thank You - @blueorgy
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit