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A drop of water in forced oscillation, as the frequency changes, passes through various normal oscillation modes whose shapes resemble the spherical harmonic functions. The images were taken using a Nikon 1 V2 camera, frame rate 400 fps, equipped with a micro lens f = 105 mm. The spherical harmonics plots have been obtained with Wolfram Mathematica.
The bottom left shape is a superposition of Y96 and Y60, plus the hemisphere Y00 accounting for the underlying unperturbed shape of the drop. Likewise, the other shapes are superpositions of Y60 and Y00 (bottom right), Y50 and Y00 (top right) and Y31, Y3−1, and Y00 (top left).
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