Forces on Water Drop

[RVDallas]

Here's a fun question I'd like some feedback on.

It looks like in the attached photo, a water droplet was captured over the course of a 1/8 second exposure (5.6 aperture, 1/8 sec exposure from what the photographer told me). It looks like the drop fell into some water and this photograph shows some water bouncing back up as a result. What forces give the water droplet this sort of serpentine shape? I'm really rusted with the notions of surface tension, but doesn't that make it have the pinched ends?

A brief explanation would be welcomed!

Regards,
RV

 

[BigInch]

that's a water drop???

We will design everything from now on using only S.I. units ... except for the pipe diameter. Unk. British engineer

 

[IRstuff]

It's unfortunate that there's no scale to reference things with, and it's not a multiple exposure, which would make it more obvious what's happening to the drop.
However, this clip:

http://wowstockfootage.com/clip.php?id=9

may shed some light on the subject.

If you look closely at some of the drops that splash up from the cube hitting the water, you'll see a few of them wobbling in the air (one at ~12.11 sec moving slightly to the left of center of the screen), which is probably due to some rotational momentum attached to the drop. If you time lapse that exposure, the wobbling drop should look like a serpentine, as its aspect continually changes while it's moving through the air.

TTFN

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