Opposites attract -- but they may not stay together
Thursday, September 24, 2009 - 17:21
in Physics & Chemistry
(PhysOrg.com) -- Opposites may always attract. But they may not remain together long-term. In a counter-intuitive discovery published in the current edition of the journal Nature, researchers from Harvard, the University of California at Davis, Princeton, and Penn State University report that oppositely charged drops of water will not attract permanently, but instead will bounce off each other indefinitely when subjected to a force of attraction created by what physicists call an electric field that is too strong.