We use diamagnetic levitation to investigate the shapes and the stability of free electrically charged and spinning liquid drops of volume $\sim 1$ ml. In addition to binary fission and Taylor cone-jet fission modes observed at low and high charge density, respectively, we also observe an unusual mode which appears to be a hybrid of the two. Measurements of the angular momentum required to fission a charged drop show that nonrotating drops become unstable to fission at the amount of charge predicted by Lord Rayleigh. This result is in contrast to the observations of most previous experiments on fissioning charged drops, which typically exhibit fission well below Rayleigh’s limit.

中文翻译：

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高电荷和快速旋转的悬浮液滴的形状和易裂性

我们使用抗磁悬浮来研究自由带电和旋转液滴体积的形状和稳定性 $〜\mathrm{1个}$毫升 除了分别在低电荷密度和高电荷密度下观察到的二元裂变模式和泰勒锥射流裂变模式外，我们还观察到一种异常模式，该模式似乎是两者的混合体。裂变带电液滴所需的角动量的测量结果表明，在瑞利勋爵预测的电荷量下，非旋转液滴对裂变变得不稳定。该结果与大多数先前对裂变带电液滴的实验观察到的结果相反，裂变带电液滴通常表现出远低于瑞利极限的裂变。