There is probably some aspect of glass cleanliness, or residue, maybe a small difference between leaded and non-leaded crystal? That’s just wild speculation, and I’m guessing it’s not a big factor. The slope of the glass will make some difference, because the effect is a competition between surface tension drawing the wine up the side, and gravity pulling it down. More slope means a lower effective force from gravity.
Beyond cleanliness and slope, have you not noticed how water beads differently on different stemware? It’s very different on the top-of-the-line Riedel than it is on a Libby glass. And plastic is altogether different. Even with a rinse aid, plastic containers hold water drops in my dishwasher while glass doesn’t.
John, sure, different materials have difference forces of attraction (adhesion) between water and the surface. Plastic is less than glass, so you expect water to bead on plastic more. Here are a couple of instructive and visual links to explain it better than I can:
https://www.appstate.edu/~goodmanjm/rcoe/asuscienceed/background/waterdrops/waterdrops.html
Besides running Tanaro River Imports for the last 10 years, my day job is as a professor at UCI in Criminology… Even though I myself am not a mathematician, I do a lot of work on mathematical models of crime patterns and the like, and one of my co-authors is a famous UCLA Mathematician, Andrea Bertozzi. I’ve worked with Andrea for years and only found out this part of her research when she sent me the following link that I thought some of you true “geeks” might find interesting: Scientists Have Cracked the Code on ‘Wine Legs,’ and It Could Lead to Some Cool New Glassware
Enjoy!
Merged
Apologies… been off the board a couple of days and did only a quick scan.
Thanks for merging, Todd!
