The “Cheerios effect”
By Dominic Vella, L. Mahadevan. 2004
496 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Objects that float at the interface between a liquid and a gas interact because of interfacial deformation and the effect of gravity. We highlight the crucial role of buoyancy in this interaction, which, for small particles, prevails over the capillary suction that often is assumed to be the dominant effect. We emphasize this point using a simple classroom demonstration, and then derive the physical conditions leading to mutual attraction or repulsion. We also quantify the force of interaction in particular instances and present a simple dynamical model of this interaction. The results obtained from this model are validated by comparison to experimental results for the mutual attraction of two identical spherical particles. We consider some of the applications of the effect that can be found in nature and the laboratory.
Subfields: Condensed Matter Physics, Materials Chemistry, Physical and Theoretical Chemistry
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/cb7c9bf9d23defdb84daf005d07d0ceaa4a8b87f
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In Condensed Matter Physics
In Materials Chemistry
In Physical and Theoretical Chemistry
Citations in the corpus
- The Integument of Water-walking Arthropods: Form and Function (2007, background): “, 1997 ; Kralchevsky and Denkov , 2001 ) have long known that lateral capillary forces exist between small floating objects , an effect responsible for the formation of bubble rafts in champagne and the clumping of Cheerios in a cereal bowl ( Vella and Mahadevan , 2005 ) .”
- Liquid marbles: Properties and applications (2011, background): “The positive value of γint corresponds to resulting attractive force, and the negative value to repulsive force [56,57].”