High-speed camera captures a water jet's splashy impact as it pierces a droplet

August 18, 2021

by Jennifer Chu, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Squirting a jet of water through a drop of liquid may sound like idle fun, but if done precisely, and understood thoroughly, the splashy exercise could help scientists identify ways to inject fluids such as vaccines through skin without using needles.

That's the motivation behind a new study by engineers at MIT and the University of Twente in the Netherlands. The study involves firing small jets of water through many kinds of droplets, hundreds of times over, using high-speed cameras to capture each watery impact. The team's videos are reminiscent of the famous strobe-light photographs of a bullet piercing an apple, pioneered by MIT's Harold "Doc" Edgerton.

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