substances & impurities. She found that small amounts of impurities could have a large impact on surface tension.
She had tried writing to physicists in vain, but her brother sent her a paper on surface phenomena by renown physicist Lord Rayleigh. She wrote Rayleigh a letter, including all her results. She explained that she had been unable to publish her results in any scientific journal & she gave him her permission to use her results if they were at all useful. 🧵4/5
applied her analytic mind & careful observation to what she saw even in greasy dishwater. Fascinated with how soap behaves on the surface of the water & in the effect of impurities she began performing experiments & pioneered the entire field of surface science describing physical properties at interfaces, gained international recognition, published a series of peer-reviewed papers & earned an honorary doctoral degree from Braunschweig U. 🧵2/
Performing kitchen-table research, she developed a surface film balance technique to study soap & surfactants at the air-liquid interfaces & defined the Pockels point, the minimum area a single molecule can occupy in a monomolecular film (20 Å squared). She used a through with sliding divider, lengthwise ruler & a button lifted by an apothecary scale to measure surface tension. She could then compare the force required to lift her button from pure water, or water with various added 🧵3/
substances & impurities. She found that small amounts of impurities could have a large impact on surface tension.
She had tried writing to physicists in vain, but her brother sent her a paper on surface phenomena by renown physicist Lord Rayleigh. She wrote Rayleigh a letter, including all her results. She explained that she had been unable to publish her results in any scientific journal & she gave him her permission to use her results if they were at all useful. 🧵4/5
He instantly recognized the importance of Agnes’ work & to his credit he sent them to Nature, putting the weight of his reputation behind supporting the work of an unknown amateur. Nature published Ages’ letter with Rayleigh’s cover letter. This paper, ‘Surface Tension’ is considered a landmark in the history of surface #chemistry
Find more on my blog: https://minouette.blogspot.com/2026/02/agnes-pockels-find-wonder-while-washing.html?m=1
🧵5/5
