Pearl on Taro Leaf | Gujarati | Why water doesn't stick to some leaves
Channel: Arvind Gupta
Date: 2015-03-12

Take a Corm leaf which is readily available in the vegetable market. You can also use a lotus leaf. Drop some water on it with the help of a dropper. You will see that the drop doesn’t stick to the leaf but floats on it. You can roll the water droplet from one end of the leaf to the other like a floating ball. The water makes a nice, transparent mobile bead. This non wetting bead can be moved around very easily. This beading effect is because of the fine coating on the lotus leaf. The corm or lotus leaf has a spiky coating on them. This spiky coating makes the surface hydrophobic which means it does not like water. Now due to the surface tension of water its droplet becomes a “bead” which can freely float and run on the leaf without sticking to its surface. You can also see these droplets in the form of early morning “dew”. This work was supported by IUCAA and Tata Trust. This film was made by Ashok Rupner TATA Trust: Education is one of the key focus areas for Tata Trusts, aiming towards enabling access of quality education to the underprivileged population in India. To facilitate quality in teaching and learning of Science education through workshops, capacity building and resource creation, Tata Trusts have been supporting Muktangan Vigyan Shodhika (MVS), IUCAA's Children’s Science Centre, since inception. To know more about other initiatives of Tata Trusts, please visit www.tatatrusts.org