THE STABILITY OF MESOSCOPIC WATER CLUSTERS AND THIN-FILMS

A physical interpretation of observed instability of mesoscopic water drops and thin films is proposed based on the notion of the long range interactions between liquid crystallike structures formed near interf aces. For a simple spherically symmetric drop model, the instability e ffects are described analytically in the framework of theory based on introduction of a Landau free energy functional with the polarization as a vector order parameter. The instability interval has been evaluat ed.