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.
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.
Sliders and toggles let you set the gradient source (thermal or concentration-based), its intensity, and its position on the interface, along with playback controls to run, pause, and reset the simulated flow and droplet formation.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.