Washington, Jan 12 (ANI): Dewdrops inspired poet Rabindranath Tagore to write, "Let your life lightly dance on the edges of time like dew on the tip of a leaf."
But the Nobel laureate might have fewer clues why do dewdrops do what they do on leaves.
Now, a new study has finally offered an explanation for why small dewdrops do as Tagore advised and form on the tips, rather than the flat surfaces, of leaves.
It said the dewdrops do so to lower its energy.
In the study, Martin E. R. Shanahan observes that drops of water have a preference for exactly where they collect on leaves as their surfaces cool in the morning and afternoon.
Those droplets, which condense from water vapour - moisture - in the air, collect randomly across the surfaces of flat leaves.
However, dewdrops tend to accumulate at the tips of spindly leaves, even if that means defying gravity by moving upwards.
He explained that an inherent "unwillingness" or "lack of necessity" of water drops to move on a dry surface governs their positioning on flat leaves, causing them to stay where they form.
Dew's tendency to head to the end of finely pointed leaves, however, sent Shanahan looking for a different explanation.
The answer is based on the fundamental principle of free energy, that everything in nature seeks the lowest possible energy state.
Shanahan modelled two types of dewdrops on a theoretical (simplified) cone-shaped leaf: a thin, cylindrical sheath of water and a spherical drop cantered on the cone's axis.
In both cases, he found that the drop lowered its energy by moving toward the point of the leaf.
The finding appeared in ACS' journal Langmuir. (ANI)
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