Water in Zero Gravity

name         Veronica
status      student
grade        6-8
location     NY

Question - How does water behaves in 0 gravity?
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Veronica,

Good question!  Since water is normally affected by gravity, it will find
the lowest point in any container that it can.  This can be a bottle, or if
that bottle has a hole in it, then the floor.  Under zero-gravity, however,
there is no gravity to hold the water in bottom of the container.  Therefore
it will float around like spacemen do in the movies.  The water will still
be cohesive with itself, for the most part, meaning that you won't ever get
a fine mist of water without a lot of work.  The water bonds to itself and
if one droplet runs into another, there is a good chance that they will
combine and move together.  (There are a lot of situations that will
determine whether the droplets will actual combine or not, but let's just
assume they are moving slow enough and in approximately the same
direction.)  Other than this, it will float around until it interacts with
something else.  Remember that water is still a liquid, in zero-gravity or
not, so when it runs into solids, it will try to take the form of the solid
(like with a bottle).

Matt Voss
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From the few videos I've seen of astronauts playing with water in space, it
tends to form into large, floating drops.  The reason it doesn't just spread
out all over the place is surface tension.  If you've ever overfilled a
glass just slightly, you may have noted the water forms a slight dome,
instead of just running over the side like you'd expect.  This surface layer
of water has a small amount of tension to it, like a rubber balloon.  Water
drops readily form into larger drops, because a larger drop has more volume
and can hold more water for it's surface area.  Any slight force acting on
the super large floating drops of water though, and they can be torn apart.


Ryan B.
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