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Sliding droplets generate electrical charge as they stick and unstick Physics World
2025-04-30 22:45:04| Spiritual Career Counseling
If a water droplet flowing over a surface gets stuck, and then unsticks itself, it generates an electric charge. The discoverers of this so-called depinning phenomenon are researchers at RMIT University and the University of Melbourne, both in Australia, and they say that boosting it could make energy-harvesting devices more efficient.The newly observed charging mechanism is conceptually similar to slide electrification, which occurs when a liquid leaves a surface that is, when the surface goes from wet to dry. However, the idea that the opposite process can also generate a charge is new, says Peter Sherrell, who co-led the study. We have found that going from dry to wet matters as well and may even be (in some cases) more important, says Sherrell, an interdisciplinary research fellow at RMIT. Our results show how something as simple as water moving on a surface still shows basic phenomena that have not been understood yet.Co-team leader Joe Berry, a fluid dynamics expert at Melb...
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