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Plateau's Laws - Wikipedia

Plateau's laws describe the configuration and structure of soap films and bubbles. The laws, formulated by Belgian physicist Joseph Plateau in the 19th century through experiments, state that: 1) soap films are entire smooth surfaces, 2) the curvature of a soap film is constant, 3) soap films meet along edges in threes at 120 degrees, and 4) these edges meet at vertices in fours at the tetrahedral angle of 109 degrees. Configurations not following these laws are unstable and soap films will rearrange to conform. These laws were later mathematically proved to apply to minimal surfaces.

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136 views6 pages

Plateau's Laws - Wikipedia

Plateau's laws describe the configuration and structure of soap films and bubbles. The laws, formulated by Belgian physicist Joseph Plateau in the 19th century through experiments, state that: 1) soap films are entire smooth surfaces, 2) the curvature of a soap film is constant, 3) soap films meet along edges in threes at 120 degrees, and 4) these edges meet at vertices in fours at the tetrahedral angle of 109 degrees. Configurations not following these laws are unstable and soap films will rearrange to conform. These laws were later mathematically proved to apply to minimal surfaces.

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sterling goin
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© © All Rights Reserved
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Plateau's laws

Plateau's laws describe the structure of


soap films. These laws were formulated in
the 19th century by the Belgian physicist
Joseph Plateau from his experimental
observations. Many patterns in nature are
based on foams obeying these laws.[1]
Bubbles in a foam of soap. Soap films meet in threes at about 120° along Plateau borders and these borders meet at
vertices at about the tetrahedral angle.

Laws for soap films


Plateau's laws describe the shape and
configuration of soap films as follows:[2]

1. Soap films are made of entire


(unbroken) smooth surfaces.
2. The mean curvature of a portion of a
soap film is everywhere constant on
any point on the same piece of soap
film.
3. Soap films always meet in threes
along an edge called a Plateau
border, and they do so at an angle of
arccos(− 12 ) = 120°.

4. These Plateau borders meet in fours


at a vertex, at the tetrahedral angle of
arccos(− 13 ) ≈ 109.47°.

Configurations other than those of


Plateau's laws are unstable, and the film
will quickly tend to rearrange itself to
conform to these laws.[3]

That these laws hold for minimal surfaces


was proved mathematically by Jean Taylor
using geometric measure theory.[4][5]
See also
Young–Laplace equation, governing the
curvature of surfaces in a soap film

Notes
1. Ball, 2009. pp. 66–71, 97–98, 291–292
2. Ball, 2009. p. 68
3. Ball, 2009. pp. 66–67
4. Taylor, Jean E. (1976), "The structure of
singularities in soap-bubble-like and soap-
film-like minimal surfaces", Annals of
Mathematics, Second Series, 103 (3): 489–
539, doi:10.2307/1970949 (https://doi.org/
10.2307%2F1970949) , JSTOR 1970949 (ht
tps://www.jstor.org/stable/1970949) ,
MR 0428181 (https://mathscinet.ams.org/
mathscinet-getitem?mr=0428181) .

5. Almgren, Frederick J., Jr.; Taylor, Jean E.


(July 1976), "The geometry of soap films
and soap bubbles", Scientific American, 235
(1): 82–93, Bibcode:1976SciAm.235a..82A
(https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1976Sc
iAm.235a..82A) ,
doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0776-82 (htt
ps://doi.org/10.1038%2Fscientificamerican
0776-82) .

Sources
Ball, Philip (2009). Shapes. Nature's
Patterns: a tapestry in three parts. Oxford
University Press. pp. 66–71, 97–98,
291–292. ISBN 978-0-19-960486-9.
External links
Weisstein, Eric W. "Plateau's Laws" (http
s://mathworld.wolfram.com/PlateausLa
ws.html) . MathWorld.

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This page was last edited on 23 October 2022, at


02:15 (UTC). •
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