Surface Tension: What’s Your Breaking Point?

Surface tension is explained by hyperphysics as an effect within the surface layer of a liquid that causes that layer to behave as an elastic sheet. It’s the magic that allows us to fill a glass of water above the rim of the glass without spilling over, if we’re very careful. It’s the same principle that allows us to put a needle or paperclip on top of the water (as pictured above).

This bug understands that it works. I doubt the bug understands how.

Kids are fascinated with magic of this sort. We all learned the cool experiments we could perform back in junior high, or earlier. Maybe schools need to do more of this real world magic stuff to engage students in the pursuit of the hard sciences. But I digress.

Surface tension crawled to the front of my mind the other day when I began to pour a soft drink into a glass and as the foam rose to the top it slowly rose well above the rim of the glass. I was careful and it never overflowed. Surface tension. I hadn’t thought of it for a very long time.

At the time I was pouring the soft drink I was engaged in thoughtful consideration of some life issues (I’m always engaged in thoughtful consideration of life issues). Tension is often part of life. That fine line where the liquid reaches a point where it can remained contained or spill over became a focal point of my thoughts for the next few days.

There are many elements of surface tension, but my focus fell to that one aspect - the point of containment vs. the point of spillage. I began to realize we may all have our point. Some call it the breaking point. That’s as good a label as any. And it appropriately describes what happens.

The liquid, in my case - Diet Dr. Pepper, either reaches a point where it breaks loose and spills over, or it doesn’t. I’m not a scientist. I don’t know where that point is. I just know I kept pouring slowly hoping to avoid that breaking point. Yet I was captivated with pushing the level higher - to see how high it might go. Eventually, I ran out of Diet Dr. Pepper and fortunately, the breaking point was never found. But if my bottle of Diet Dr. Pepper had been larger, would I have discovered the breaking point? Or, would I have stopped? Don’t know.

Surface tension happens in life. We pour (or push) the proverbial envelope to see just far things will go before they give way. What is it that attracts us to that edge? Why do we want to see surface tension in action?

Sometimes we’re not the one doing the pouring. It can be a boss or some other person in our life who is pouring. And we aren’t in control of the forces that cause surface tension, but we are in control of surface tension to the degree that we can determine the breaking point.

Are we fascinated with surface tension or are we more fascinated with seeing how far we can push it before reaching the breaking point? Maybe we’re captivated by seeing how long we hang on without breaking.

My surface tension is reaching the breaking point in some areas of life. And that’s probably a good thing. In fact, I know it is. The energy expended to hang on is sometimes better spent spilling over. Being contained isn’t always best.

Will today be the day I spill over? I don’t know. Surface tension is still pretty strong, but weakening. Other forces are always at work. As I weigh the pros and cons of hanging on or spilling over - I hope to have wisdom to know when the point has come to let go and spill over. It’s coming. I’m watching it carefully.