Stretching Polymers in Droplet-Pinch-Off Experiments

Abstract

Visualizing in polymeric liquid how the microscopic polymer molecules react to, and back-act on, the macroscopic liquid flow requires observations of very different scales and is obviously challenging technically. A new experiment overcomes this challenge and shows directly how the extension of individual polymer molecules are tied to the flow properties in an engineered slender thinning filaments of a flowing polymer solution.