Microgravity Coffee Cup 88
BuzzSkyline writes "Despite the fact that astronauts have been eating and drinking out of tubes for decades, it's actually possible to drink from an open-top cup in space. Astronaut Don Pettit recently downlinked a video that shows him slurping coffee from a cup he kludged out of plastic sheet. It appears to work pretty much like a cup on Earth, even in freefall aboard the International Space Station, thanks to capillary action."
Coincidentally (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Not just capillary action. (Score:4, Informative)
capillary action is a manifestation of surface tension
Re:Not just capillary action. (Score:5, Informative)
I said it was a manifestation of it, not that the two were equivalent terms.
I highly recommend the MIT video series by Asher Shapiro on the subject:
http://web.mit.edu/hml/ncfmf.html [mit.edu]
"Surface Tension in Fluid Mechanics"
the videos are excellent (and that's a big understatement), but if you are in a hurry just have a look at the section talking about contact angles in the film notes: http://web.mit.edu/hml/ncfmf/04STFM.pdf [mit.edu]
Re:Not just capillary action. (Score:2, Informative)
capillary action is a manifestation of surface tension
Where are the capillaries? Better to say it's just surface tension at work here, and the summary is wrong.