WETTING EXPERIMENTS WITH A WEB-CAM IN AN UNDERGRADUTE STUDENT LABORATORY

H. RITACCO

JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL EDUCATION

AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY

Año: 2006 vol. 83 p. 114 - 116

0021-9584

Examining a drop placed on a flat solid surface is an excellent method to learn about surface, rheological, and fluid mechanics problems as well as to integrate the various concepts involved during the wetting process. A simple, low-cost experiment to demonstrate the wetting dynamics of liquids on solid surfaces is described. A “Web cam” is used to measure the expansion of the drop as a function of time. The advantage of the Web cam is its low cost, which permits an individual setup per student.The results obtained from students with these devices are good and, more importantly, are instructive.