〈 Berger | Dillon 〉

What's going on? • The needle has been given an electrostatic charge by rubbing it on silk • Water droplets are placed by the needle w/ velocity v≠ 0 • H₂O has a slight separation of charge (i.e a dipole moment) so it feels the needle's charge + Coulomb's law --> orbit

slight correction: As @gravity_levity pointed out, the force induced from polarization doesn't go as 1/r² , and so Coulomb's law isn't quite enough to explain the orbit. What we can conclude from this however, is that the orbit is unstable.