A PEN

by
Mukul Chandra, Roll Number 160421
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, 208016, Kanpur, India
E-mail: mukulc@iitk.ac.in

The most common tool which everyone uses, a pen works on a principle called Capillarity. Capillarity, rise or
depression of a liquid in a small passage such as a tube of the small cross-sectional area, like the spaces between the
fibers of a towel or the openings in a porous material. Capillarity is not limited to the vertical direction. Water is drawn
into the fibers of a towel, no matter how the towel is oriented. Liquids that rise in small-bore tubes inserted into the
liquid are said to wet the tube, whereas liquids that are depressed within thin tubes below the surface of the
surrounding liquid do not wet the tube. Water is a liquid that wets capillary glass tubes; mercury is one that does not.
When wetting does not occur, capillarity does not occur.

Capillarity is the result of the surface, or interfacial, forces. The rise of water in a thin tube inserted in water is
caused by forces of attraction between the molecules of water and the glass walls and among the molecules of water
themselves. These attractive forces balance the force of gravity of the column of water that has risen to a characteristic
height. The narrower the bore of the capillary tube, the higher the water rises. Mercury, conversely, is depressed to a
greater degree, the narrower the bore. Capillary action results from two processes working together. The first is
adhesion, or the attachment of a liquid to a solid object, such as water to a glass tube, due to the attraction between
the molecules of the liquid and the solid object it contacts. The second is surface tension, the cohesion of liquid
molecules on its surface. Surface tension allows liquids to form round drops and insects called water striders to walk
across the taut surfaces of ponds. The pores [in the paper] draw in the fluid via capillary – surface tension – forces,
while the viscosity resists this motion.

Figure 1: (a) Tip of a pen, (b) Capillarity action of a pen