Capillary rise of water: impact of the submerged portion of capillary tube

摘要

In this paper we present a study on the capillary action of water in a glass tube. It is a well-known phenomenon that the rise of a water column in the capillary is governed by parameters such as surface tension of water, radius of the tube, density of water and acceleration due to gravity. The interdependence of the parameters gives rise to the famous Jurin's Law that the product of the rise (h) of water inside a capillary tube and the radius (r) of the tube is constant. Our experimental results show that h is no longer invariant for a particular value of r, rather it has a marked dependence on the immersed length of the capillary tube inside the water. Nature of this dependence has been justified by an appropriate theoretical model, which is basically an extension of the related theory given by Brown (1941 Proc. Phys. Soc. 53 233).