| Topic: | On Capillary Rise |
|---|---|
| Speaker: | Prof David Quéré ESPCI & École Polytechnique, Paris, France |
| Date: | Wednesday, 15 January 2020 |
| Time: | 10.00am to 11.00am |
| Venue: | Seminar Room EA-06-04   (Block EA, Level 6) (map of NUS can be found at http://map.nus.edu.sg/) |
| Host: | Asst Prof Zhang Mengqi |
Abstract
Capillary rise is the most famous manifestation of surface forces, and its description and understanding is the base of the physics of interfaces. After recalling a few (sometimes unknown) historical facts, we discuss recent developments of this venerable effect: how liquid slugs can be brought in motion in tubes, how there is a capillary descent when tubes are hydrophobic, how the dynamics of the rise can result from an interplay between viscosity and viscosity (no mistake in my sentence), how hummingbirds rely on capillary rise for drinking.
About the Speaker
David Quéré is a French researcher working in Soft Matter physics, with a particular interest in interfacial hydrodynamics – drops, bubbles, films, morphogenesis, coating, biomimetics. He is also a Professor at École Polytechnique, in the Departments of Mechanics and Physics. Author or co-author of about 200 papers, he tries to be equally distributed between Physics, Chemistry and Mechanics, but also between applied and fundamental research – as seen for instance from his works with companies such as Saint-Gobain, Procter & Gamble, Nikon and Essilor. He is also an editor in Soft Matter (since 2012), Scientific Reports (since 2015) and Physical Review Fluids (since its creation).