Rocket drops: The self-propulsion of supercooled freezing drops

Isolated supercooled water drops have been observed to move spontaneously while freezing in vacuum. This motion is caused by an increase of the evaporation rate during the early stages of freezing, which transfers momentum to the drops, similar to rocket propul-sion. As in other cases of self-propulsion, symmetry breaking is necessary, and occurs when ice nucleation occurs away from the center of the drop. The self-propulsion velocity was modeled analytically for a simplified case, and numerically for two experiments. The model predicts peak velocities on the order of 1 m/s in vacuum, and a drop kinematics similar to that observed experimentally. In air, the self-propulsion velocity is expected to be much smaller but may be detectable for micron-sized drops.