Splash! Ice cube and Champagne Flute

**Manfred M** · 19th August 2023, 04:14 PM

What I have learned after spending a day shooting ice cube falling into glassware and water is that the closeup views is where we see the interesting things happening. This is a significant crop (with blue and magenta lighting) showing what is happening above and in the glass.

I find that the ripples caused by the water as well as the very fine spray of tiny water droplets as being the interesting parts of this shot.

**Manfred M** · 20th August 2023, 02:35 PM

Someone who has seen this image elsewhere has asked about the "lemon peel" look on parts of the glass and wondered if it was part of the glass.

The glass itself is smooth and the lemon peel effect comes from the water.

If you look just above the glass and more on the left side, you will see many tiny droplets of water in the air. I suspect what we are seeing is their source.

In order to great these droplets the shock wave caused by the falling ice cube created a pattern of small "hills". The droplets are the parts that separated from the tops of these "hills" and the lemon peel look is achieved by light passing through the variable thickness of this area of water. The base of the hills would be thicker and transmit less like, giving the darker appearance. The tops of the hills would be thinner and let less light through and would show up as being lighter.

It looks like I created a small science experiment as well as taking a photo...