Re: How does the drop of water go to when you drop a stone in water?

Due to the property of surface tension, the free surface of a body of fluid 
behaves as a stretched rubber sheet. The exact dynamics of deformation of 
the surface when a stone is dropped on it are very complicated, and it 
would take very detailed mathematics to describe the phenomenon. If you 
were an engineer, what you would have done is write down the equations that 
described the motion of the rubber surface when something like a stone was 
to disturb it. The solution of the equations would give you your exact 
numerical answer to different cases of different stone size, height, 
surface tension etc..

Instead of that, let us try to get a physical understanding of the process. 
When you hit a stretched surface (like a drum skin), it starts oscillating. 
The spot where the stone dropped goes up and down. If it's velocity while 
it is coming up is too large, surface tension cannot hold back the water 
around the spot, and a drop detaches from the main body. After that, it is 
pretty much under the influence of gravity, and how high it will go depends 
on how fast it was travelling when it broke. This gives us an 
interesting conclusion. The stronger the surface tension is, the faster it 
must move to break away. The faster it moves the higher it goes. So,a 
liquid with higher surface tension has higher drops, but needs the stones 
to be dropped from a larger height. Is this correct?