Abstract

Experiments were carried out for exotic'' rotationally symmetric containers aboard the first NASA United States Microgravity Laboratory Space Shuttle flight (USML-1). The containers have the property that they admit an entire continuum of distinct equilibrium rotationally-symmetric capillary free-surfaces for a given liquid volume and contact angle. It was found, after the containers were filled in orbit, that an initial equilibrium interface from the symmetric continuum reoriented, when perturbed, to a stable interface that was not rotationally symmetric, as predicted by the mathematical theory

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