Bursting of Underwater Oil Drops
When an oil drop rises to the water-air interface, the thin film above it ruptures — and what happens next determines how oil spreads across the ocean surface after a spill and how aerosols form above it. We uncovered the mechanisms that decide whether the drop spreads into a film, fragments into daughter droplets, or stays intact, and mapped the outcomes onto the drop's physical properties. Published in Physical Review Letters.