Simulating Drops Settling in a Still Liquid

Researchers have devised a physics-based method to reproduce intricate mixing patterns of two miscible liquids. A small drop of one liquid descends in an initially still surrounding liquid, such as an ink drop sinking in water. Modeling the drop as a particle swarm, the researchers reduce the miscible-liquid-mixing problem to that of liquid--particle interactions. This method traces each particle to generate the mixing pattern; it allows two-way interaction between the particles and liquid.