The joy of watching Leidenfrost droplets can be experienced by anyone with a hot frying pan in their kitchen. Upon placement on a very hot surface, a water drop will spontaneously levitate on a cushion of its own evaporated vapor. In this Leidenfrost state, the drop is free to undergo vibrations driven by pressure variations under the droplet. Our research looks at the self-organized, star-shaped oscillations that are easily observed in large Leidenfrost droplets, which acts as a convenient model system to study the nonlinear, parametric coupling of mechanical vibrations in many natural systems.
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