This set of videos shows the impact of water drops on the surface of granular particles—a phenomenon that is likely familiar to all of us who have watched raindrops splashing in a backyard or on a beach. The high-speed photography reveals the detailed liquid-drop impact dynamics at various impact velocities. Such information allows us to construct a simple model for describing the morphology of raindrop imprints in a granular bed. Surprisingly, we found that liquid-drop impact cratering follows the same energy scaling and reproduces the same crater morphology as that of catastrophic asteroid impact cratering.

[APS Physics]