Hesitant Nature

Abstract

The addition of even minute amounts of a polymer to a liquid can modify some of its properties drastically, like the ways in which jets of the liquid break into droplets or the dynamics of dripping droplets at an orifice. The elasticity conferred by the polymers can delay the separation of the drops considerably, which hesitate between falling or running back to the orifice, gobbling along their way the thread to which they are attached. Other free-surface flows are also of a hesitant nature. © 2009 Copyright Cambridge University Press 2009.