75th Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Fluid Dynamics (November 20, 2022 — November 22, 2022)

P0015: Fun with superwalking droplets

Authors
  • Rahil Valani, School of Mathematical Sciences, University of Adelaide, South Australia 5005, Australia
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/APS.DFD.2022.GFM.P0015

Take a subwoofer of a computer speaker system and glue a petridish to the subwoofer cone. Pour some silicone oil (20cSt) into the petridish and vibrate it vertically by driving the speaker with a sinusoidal audio signal composed of 80Hz and 40Hz along with a phase difference. Flick a toothpick or use a syringe to create millitmeter-sized droplets on the free surface of the liquid that will start walking horizontally. These are superwalking droplets that constitute self-propelled classical wave-particle entities. Such wave-particle entities can exhibit hydrodynamic quantum analogs whilst also forming a fascinating active-matter system, but above all, observing their motion and interactions is mesmerizing.

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