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Microfluidics

For a few drops more

Nature Physics volume 10, pages 87–88 (2014)Cite this article

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Experiments in microfluidics reveal long-range orientational correlations in the velocities of flowing droplets that can be rationalized in terms of an analytically solvable model.

A recurring theme in physics is the dynamics of many-body systems. For example, we are familiar with two-body problems, such as the motion of a planet around the Sun. Moreover, we learn that for a three-body problem, such as the Sun–Earth–Moon system, there is, in general, no analytical solution and the dynamics is not predictable over long periods (although the equations are deterministic). Thus, unravelling the behaviour of many-body problems, which occur in all areas of physics on various time and length scales — vortices in superconductors, electrical propagation in neural networks, the formation of self-organized structures during the sedimentation of particles in a fluid, the flocking of birds or schooling of fish and so on — is a long-standing challenge. Typically, these (out-of-equilibrium) systems involve interactions between the many discrete elements that constitute them, and no general governing principles are available for how to think quantitatively about such problems, short of elaborate simulations.

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Figure 1: Disc-shaped water droplets (black) translating along a confined oil layer deform the flow field as shown by the red streamlines (initially the oil flows uniformly to the right).

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  1. Howard A. Stone and Shashi Thutupalli are at Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544, USA,

    Howard A. Stone & Shashi Thutupalli

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  1. Howard A. Stone
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  2. Shashi Thutupalli
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Correspondence to Howard A. Stone.

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Stone, H., Thutupalli, S. For a few drops more. Nature Phys 10, 87–88 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys2879

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