Nitrogen stars: morphogenesis of a liquid drop

D. STRIER; A. DUARTE; H. FERRARI; G. B. MINDLIN

PHYSICA A - STATISTICAL AND THEORETICAL PHYSICS

Elsevier

Año: 2000 p. 261 - 266

0378-4371

We report a study of a symmetry-breaking instability which ocurrs during the free evaporation of liquid nitrogen placed on a concave container initially at room temperature. The system evolves spontaneously from a highly disordered boiling state to one characterized by sequence of well-defined spatio-temporal structures. This sequence starts with the formation of a levitating drop. As the evaporation proceeds the drop undergoes an alternation between different star-like-shaped patterns with decreasing number of tips. In addition, each of this patterns oscillates. We frame the observed phenomena within the qualitative theory of bifurcations.