How exactly do we spread droplets as we talk? Engineers found out.

Technology Org  October 13, 2020
Using high-speed imaging an international team of researchers (France, USA – Princeton University) has shown how phonation of common stop consonants, found in most of the world’s spoken languages, form and extend salivary filaments in a few milliseconds as moist lips open or when the tongue separates from the teeth. Both saliva viscoelasticity and airflow associated with the plosion of stop consonants are essential for stabilizing and subsequently forming centimeter-scale thin filaments, tens of microns in diameter, that break into speech droplets. The plosive consonants induce vortex rings that drive meter-long transport of exhaled air, tying this mechanism to transport associated with speech. Their research suggests a mitigation of droplet production during speech by using a lip balm…read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE 

The researchers used this laser sheet to illuminate the saliva droplets. The laser light, originating at the left, is expanded to form a “sheet” going from left to right and about a meter high… Credit: Illustration by Manouk Abkarian, Princeton University

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