Liquid bridges between cylinders, in a torus, and between spheres

The stability of a capillary liquid bridge of given volume between two small, solid, equal, separated spheres is investigated by formulating and treating a minimum energy problem in the calculus of variations and by experiment. A conjecture is made that in the case of two solutions one and only one is minimizing, and that the case of one solution represents the limiting stable bridge. This theory agrees accurately with our stability experiments. Furthermore, it is possible to predict the cohesive force. For the case of spheres in contact, the theory presented here is in agreement with some experimental work and also with the theory of Fisher and calculations of cohesive force based on Melrose and Wallick's solution to the bridge problem. For the case of separated spheres, the agreement with the only available experimental data is excellent except for close separations.