ink droplets in water

See p. 117: "Recall Helmholtz's experiment, quoted by D'Arcy Thompson: after falling through a few centimetres, a drop of ink hits the surface of the water and, stopped by the liquid, gives birth to a vortex ring (corresponding to the inverse mushroom chreod). Then the vortex ring disintegrates into three or four droplets, each which, falling, gives birth to smaller rings; these are other inverse mushroom chreods succeeding the first after an intermediary umbilical zone which is evidence of the great instability of the process, for the number of droplets into which it disintegrates can vary greatly according to the initial conditions. In fact, this succession is typical of a generalized catastrophe where the metabolic form of the vortex ring decays into the static form of the droplets."



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