Worthington's mercury droplet splash drawings as an animation

This animation is assembled from A. M. (Arthur Mason) Worthington's drawings of .15 inch diameter mercury droplets falling from 3 inches onto a glass plate. Some of these were drawn as early as 1876, using a nearby spark for very brief illumination. The thirty drawings (see source scans and references, from his 1894 The Splash of a Drop) are at different phases of the splash, separated by about 1/600 sec., using machines that could repeatably produce a drop and vary the timing of the spark. He refined his equipment and techniques over several decades, eventually moving to photography.

Worthington, a physics professor, wrote and spoke eloquently about his methods, observations, and the physics behind drops and splashes, much of which is summarized in his 1908 book A Study of Spashes.
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From The History of Stopping Time #1: A.M. Worthington, Ernst Mach and Doc Edgerton:

"They are perhaps one of the first revelations on the quiet residence of energy in something as simple as a drop of water or mercury. Much in the same way Robert Hooke revealed the microscopic universe to unsuspecting readers, so too did Worthington, in his way, reveal the explosive world of small, fast, and lost events. Worthington’s style is of course exceptionally restrained and free of exclamation, even while describing the first time any human has witnessed these events, like so: “…watching the changes of form of drops of various liquids falling vertically on a horizontal plane…the whole splash takes place so quickly that the eye cannot follow the changes of form…” This report, “On Drops” follows Worthington’s own earlier effort of 1876 and 1877 “A Second Paper on The Forms Assumed by Drops of Liquids falling vertically on a Horizontal Plate” (Proceedings of the Royal Society, 174 and 177), chronicles his brilliant adventure in the newly discovered world of fast time—a world he was pretty much creating as he moved along."

Mon, Nov 2, 2009  Permanent link

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