Capillary Action

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Liquids (such as water) that wet glass climb upward on the surfaces of their containers to form a concave meniscus. This occurs when adhesive solid-liquid intermolecular forces are stronger than liquid forces. Such liquids will rise in a narrow capillary tube until a balance is established between the effects of surface tension and gravity. The capillary rise increases sharply as the tube is made narrower. For example, water in a glass capillary of radius 0.1 mm will rise by about 140 mm. The capillary rise is given by , where
is the solid-liquid surface tension in N/m,
is the contact angle for the meniscus (measured upward from the vertical wall),
is the density of the liquid,
is the gravitational acceleration (9.81 m/s
), and
is the radius of the capillary. In this Demonstration,
is expressed as a specific gravity (
corresponding to 1000 kg/m
), while
and
are given in mm. The default values are those for water in glass at 20°C.
Contributed by: S. M. Blinder (March 2011)
Open content licensed under CC BY-NC-SA
Snapshots
Details
Snapshots 1 and 2: narrower tubes show higher capillary rises
Snapshot 3: water at 100°C has a surface tension reduced to 0.0599 N/m, hence a lower capillary rise
Reference: G. K. Batchelor, An Introduction to Fluid Dynamics, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Permanent Citation
"Capillary Action"
http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/CapillaryAction/
Wolfram Demonstrations Project
Published: March 7 2011