Capillary Action

Capillary action is the ability of a liquid to flow in narrow spaces without the assistance of, or even in opposition to, external forces like gravity.

The height of a liquid column caused by capillary action equals the product of the cosine of the contact angle and twice the surface tension divided by the product of the gravitational acceleration, the radius of the tube and the density of the liquid.

Formula

QuantityVariable["H", "Height"] == (Cos[QuantityVariable["θ", "Angle"]]*Quantity[2, "StandardAccelerationOfGravity"^(-1)]*QuantityVariable["γ", "SurfaceTension"])/(QuantityVariable["r", "Radius"]*QuantityVariable["ρ", "MassDensity"])

symbol	description	physical quantity
H	height of liquid column	"Height"
θ	contact angle	"Angle"
r	radius of tube	"Radius"
γ	surface tension	"SurfaceTension"
ρ	fluid density	"MassDensity"

Forms

Examples

Open in Wolfram Cloud

Download Example Notebook

Get the resource:

In[1]:=

Out[1]=

Get the formula:

In[2]:=

Out[2]=

Use some values:

In[3]:=

$FormulaData[ ResourceObject[ "Capillary Action"], {QuantityVariable["\[Theta]","Angle"] -> Quantity[20, "AngularDegrees"], QuantityVariable["\[Gamma]","SurfaceTension"] -> Quantity[0.0728`3., ("Newtons")/("Meters")], QuantityVariable["\[Rho]","MassDensity"] -> None}]$

Out[3]=

Wolfram Formula Repository (Under Development)

Capillary Action

Formula

Forms

Examples

External Links

Source Metadata

Publisher Information