This is awesome.
My first thought was that the water would leave the washcloth and then the droplets would separate and float away, but that’s definitely not what happens. Check it out!
According to GeeksAreSexy.com:
CSA Astronaut Chris Hadfield performed a simple science experiment designed by grade 10 Lockview High School students Kendra Lemke and Meredith Faulkner. The students from Fall River, Nova Scotia won a national science contest held by the Canadian Space Agency with their experiment on surface tension in space using a wet washcloth.
[Via: Geeks Are Sexy]
Of course we imagine the water eventually moving away from your hands and the cloth. However the water doesn’t move on it’s own accord, it moves at the behest of gravity. You wring out a wash cloth on earth and gravity yanks the water off of the wash cloth (dousing your feet presumably). Meanwhile in a zero G environment it’s just going to stay put. It will move the minimum distance, from between the fibers to the area immediately around the cloth, and between the guy’s fingers. (Of course if it were in the vacuum of space the water would… Read more »
WHAAAATTTT?????