Drs. John Saylor and Joshua Bostwick recently had their their article Elastocapillary Transition in Gel Drop Oscillations published in the journal Physical Review Letters. They are especially proud of the work done by their collaborators Xingchen Shao, a PhD candidate studying under Dr. Bostwick and Steven Fredericks, a Clemson PhD alum who now works at the University of Minnesota. . The work has numerous biomedical implications, including the application to tissue engineering.
Article Abstract:
We report experimental observations of surface oscillations in an ultrasoft agarose gel drop. Ultrasoniclevitation is used to excite shape oscillations in the gel drop and we report the natural frequency of the dropas it depends upon a nondimensional elastocapillary number, which we define as the ratio of theelastocapillary length to drop size. Our experiments span a wide range of experimental parameters and werecover the appropriate scaling laws in the elastic and capillary wave limits. The crossover between thesetwo limits is observed and agrees well with a proposed frequency relationship.
Link to full article: Elastocapillary transition in gel drop oscillations
Dr. Bostwick, Xingchen Shao and Dr. Saylor
Stephen Fredericks
