Capillarity and Wetting Phenomena. Drops, Bubbles, Pearls, Waves

The study of capillarity and related phenomena requires both an acute faculty of observation and an intensity of imagination that truly allow one to see "all the world in a grain of sand." The process by which morning dew condenses into the unstable droplets that grace a spider's web, for example, has important implications for the industrial treatment of textile fibers. And an appreciation of underlying physical principles provides an answer to common questions about everyday phenomena—for example, why large drops of rain roll down a car windshield, while others descend leaving a trail of water behind them.

This latest book from renowned teacher and Nobel Laureate Pierre-Gilles de Gennes and two renowned experts in the field offers a compendium of principles designed to elucidate a wide range of phenomena. The rigor of numerical and other mathematical methods gives way to a qualitative rigor that aims to create a deep intuitive understanding of the mechanisms involved. Written in the spirit of Henri Bouasse's classic 1924 study, Capillarity and Wetting Phenomena takes a similarly subtle approach to complex problems and is destined to become a classic itself.