08.09.26: Raindrops on a web

‍This is a story about how a lousy-weather Monday ended up creating a fun photo opportunity and a reminder of things I learned in high school science classes.

‍I was working on my computer on a late September day a few years ago, riding out one of those gray, damp, misty early fall mornings. It wasn’t raining hard enough to consider the day a washout, but the steady light mist made it impossible to do any outdoor activities.

‍That all changed about 2 p.m., when the rain stopped, the sun broke through the clouds, and my wife — who had gone outside to sweep water off the deck — stepped back inside and said, “You might want to get your camera; I have something really interesting to show you.”

‍I assumed she had found a bird or other wildlife in the backyard. But when I stepped outside, she pointed me to the boxwood beside the deck.

‍It looked like the bush had been covered with clear jewels.

‍When I moved closer, I could see that one of our resident spiders had covered the boxwood with a very thin web. Instead of collecting insects, the web had collected thousands of water droplets from the misty rain. A heavier rain would have washed the web away, but the soft, steady mist stuck to the web.

‍I ran inside to grab my camera and a macro (or close-up) lens, then started walking around the boxwood clicking off photos. This photo is one of about a dozen I added to my database that day.

‍It was fun editing the photos because each water droplet was a scene all to itself. The domed shape of each droplet magnified and reversed the leaves behind it. This triggered memories of high school science classes, where we studied light refraction and other physics-related things. Light rays bend when passing through the droplet, which flips the image of objects behind the droplet. The natural curvature of the droplet acts as a magnifying glass, enlarging objects behind it. And the raindrops remained on the web because of capillary action and surface tension, aided by the stickiness of the web that locked the droplets in place. 

‍It was a real-world example of something I learned — and forgot — decades ago.