Splash of a Water Drop

above and below the surface

by Dahl Clark, 2001

This animation was made from 55 images.  Each image is of a different water drop, captured 5 ms apart from one another in time.  The result is a sequence of images that show the different stages of a splash.  

Drops were released from a height of 38 cm above the surface of a deep pool of water, which appears as a gray horizontal line.  From these photos, we see that one splash of a water drop takes 320 ms, or roughly 1/3 second, to run from start to finish.

Details of the experiment