Home▸Physics & Mechanics▸The Marangoni Effect: Surface Tension in Motion

🍷 The Marangoni Effect: Surface Tension in Motion

Explore how gradients in surface tension drive fluid flow across a liquid interface, from wine tears climbing a glass to self-propelled camphor boats and welding pools.

Physics & Mechanics3DModerate60 FPS💧 Water

This simulation visualizes how a localized change in surface tension, whether from evaporation, temperature, or a surfactant, creates a gradient along a liquid interface that pulls fluid from the low-tension region toward the high-tension region, letting you watch the resulting flow, film climbing, and droplet formation unfold in real time.

🔬 What It Demonstrates

🎮 How to Use

Choose a driving mechanism such as evaporation, heating, or surfactant addition, then apply it to a chosen spot on the liquid surface and observe how a surface tension gradient forms and propagates. Adjust the strength and location of the gradient to see how the flow speed, film climbing height, and droplet or tear formation change in response.

💡 Did You Know?

Carlo Marangoni first described this surface-tension-driven flow in his 1865 doctoral thesis, but the underlying tears-of-wine phenomenon had already been documented a decade earlier by James Thomson, the brother of the physicist Lord Kelvin, making this one of the rare effects whose everyday observation preceded its formal physical explanation.

⚙ Under the hood

Explore how gradients in surface tension drive fluid flow across a liquid interface, from wine tears climbing a glass to self-propelled camphor boats and welding pools.

surface tensionfluid dynamicsmarangoni effectcapillaritysurfactantsmicrofluidicsthermodynamicsinterfacial flow

3D · Three.js / WebGL renderer · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install