Fun Facts
Common belief: Thomas Young wrote the Young Equation.
Actual fact: Thomas Young did write a paper in 1805 titled “An essay on the cohesion of fluids” (published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 95, pp. 65–87, (1805)). This paper, however, does not contain the Young equation. Instead, it lays the experimental foundations for it. Later, Pierre Simon Laplace established the mathematical relations in connection with Young’s experiments. Yet, even he did not write the Young equation explicitly (though he wrote other equations from which he could have easily written the Young equation). It was Anthanase Dupré that published in 1869 the equation that we call today the Young Equation (Dupre,́ A. Theórie mećanique de la chaleur; Gauthier-Villars: Paris, pp. 393−395, (1869)).
Common belief: Surface science was esoteric for many years.
Actual fact: Surface science was always dealt with by then top scientists. Examples include the two giants mentioned above, namely Pierre Simon Laplace and Thomas Young, as well as more recent names such as Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Erwin Schrödinger (see references below).
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Einstein A., Folgerungen aus den Capillaritätserscheinungen, Annalen der Physik, 309 (3), pp. 513-523, (1901).
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Bohr N. Determination of the Surface-Tension of Water by the Method of Jet Vibration, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London A, 209, pp. 281-317, (1909).
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Shrödinger E. Notizüber den Kapillardruck in Gasblasen, Annalen der Physik, 351 (3), pp. 413-418, (1915).
Common belief: The Young equation and the Young modulus are named after the same person.
Actual fact: This is correct. Thomas Young is the same Young that the Young modulus is named after, and also the same person that made many other diverse scientific contributions ranging from wave theory of light to the decipherment of the Egyptian hieroglyphs using the Rosetta Stone. For this reason, Young is considered as “The Last Man Who Knew Everything” in the biography written in 2006 by Andrew Robinson.
Common belief: When the normal force is higher, the lateral (friction) force must always be higher.
Actual fact: The above belief, known as Amontons law, was shown to be to be inaccurate by David Tabor (1913 – 2005). Tabor showed that friction is in fact not a function of the normal force, but rather a function of the contact area and the adhesion. In rough surfaces, the contact area happened to be roughly proportional to the load, and therefore, only in that case, Amontons law is correct as a special situation.
Moreover, in 2009, Centrifugal Adhesion Balance experiments showed that for drops on surface, it is possible to have cases in which the frictional force decreases when the normal force increases in spite of the fact that the contact area increases as well (Tadmor et al, “Measurement of Lateral Adhesion Forces at the Interface between a Liquid Drop and a Substrate”, Physical Review Letters 103, 266101 (2009).)
Common belief: Wet Scientific is a small company.
Actual fact: This is correct, Wet Scientific is a small company with only six workers. However, we are growing and extremely proud of our customers. The most cited paper (to our knowledge) to use Wet Scientific products is:
“Functionalization of Metallic Glasses through Hierarchical Patterning”, Molla Hasan, Jan Schroers, and Golden Kumar; Nano Letters, 15, pp. 963−968, (2015).
In this beautiful paper, the authors sculpted sub-100 nm to millimeter sized features which allow an exquisite control of surface properties. They included hierarchical patterns. To understand what hierarchical patterning is, think of the way branches of a tree get thinner and thinner as they get farther away from the trunk. Similarly, in surface science, a hierarchical pattern can be rods protruding from a surface, and at the end of the rods there are smaller rods protruding from them (just for example). That paper used a variety of hierarchical patterns, and were able to tune their surfaces to desired wetting properties with incredible accuracy. The study was led by Dr. Golden Kumar from Texas Tech University, with his Ph.D. student Molla Hasan with Dr. Schroers from Yale University.
Well done guys, we at Wet Scientific are so proud of you.
More bragging:
If you want us to put your scientific work on our website, please email us. If you add a short description of the work, we can add that too.
A few papers that we know of so far include:
"Droplet Adhesion Revisited: Experiments and Theory"
Y. Xu, M. S. Sadullah, H. Mishra, S. N. M. Arunachalam, P. Zhang, APS March Meeting 2023, Las Vegas, NV, (2023)
"Nanocrystalline Yttria-Stabilized Zirconia Ceramics for Cranial Window Applications"
C. Xu, G. Uahengo, C. Rudnicki, C. Hung, A. Huang, Q. Xu, Y. Chen, D.L. Halaney, J.E. Garay, L. Mangolini, G. Aguilar, H.H. Liu, ACS Applied Bio Materials, 5, 2664−2675, (2022).
"In vitro study of transportation of porphyrin immobilized graphene oxide
through blood brain barrier"
Siheng Su, Jilong Wang, Jingjing Qiu, Raul Martinez-Zaguilan, Souad R. Sennoune, Shiren Wang, Materials Science & Engineering C, 107, 110313 (2020)
"Modifying interfacial interparticle forces to alter microstructure and viscoelasticity of densely packed particle laden interfaces"
S.E. Rahman, N. Laal-Dehghani, S. Barman, G.F. Christopher, Journal of Colloid and Interface Science 536, 30–41, (2019).
"Decoupling the effects of surface texture and chemistry on the wetting of metallic glasses"
M. Hasan, J. Warzywoda G. Kumar, Applied Surface Science, 447, Pages 355-362 ( 2018).
"Digital microfluidics using a differentially polarized interface (DPI) to enhance translational force",
M.E. Razu, J. Kim, Lan on a Chip, 18, 3293-3302 (2018).
"A Chemically Patterned Microfluidic Paper-based Analytical Device (C-μPAD) for Point-of-Care Diagnostics",
Trinh Lam, Jasmine P. Devadhasan, Ryan Howse, Jungkyu Kim, Scientific Reports, 7, 1188 (2017).
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