Some investigations on the deformation and breaking of water drops in strong electric fields

Abstract

It is obvious that for a complete comprehension of the phenomena connected with thunderstorms we must understand the behaviour of free water drops in strong electric fields such as exist in these storms. While no direct experiments have been recorded, there are several papers which give results bearing on the problem. Zeleny made very careful observations on water drops suspended from capillary tubes and showed how filaments of various shapes are formed, but his results are not directly applicable to free drops. Experiments on the breaking of soap bubbles have been made by Wilson and Taylor and by the writer, which showed that for a given bubble there is a definite field strength at which the bubble becomes unstable. Allowing for the difference in surface tensions, deductions were made of the fields required to produce instability in water drops.