Video of Evaporating Booze Droplet Looks Like a Tiny Planet

Most of us don't give much thought to drops of liquid that end up outside our drinking glasses. But physicists care a lot about liquid droplets, and study their whole lifespans—from the first splash or drip to the moment a drop disappears. Liquids that contain three different substances, though, haven't been studied as much. Detlef Lohse, a physicist at the University of Twente in the Netherlands, and his colleagues took a deep dive into one such liquid: ouzo. Ouzo is a mixture of water, ethanol, and anise oil, making its physics especially intriguing (at least to people who are intrigued by such things). Lohse explains that ouzo isn't that unusual, though. There are other liquids made up of three components that should behave in the same way as ouzo, he says: "Both other beverages like Raki or Pastis, or [three-part] liquid mixtures used in industry, medicine, or technology." Studying any ...