Surface tension measurements on levitated liquid metal drops

An improved method to measure the surface tension of liquid metals is presented. It is shown that the application of digital image processing can increase the precision of measurements performed with the oscillating drop technique. In experiments on nickel, a good reproducibility of measured surface tension and agreement with literature data were found. Measurements on iron show evidence for an influence of the oscillation amplitudes on the measured values. Experimental results on Ni-10 at.% Ti seem to show an influence of oxygen as a surface active element on the surface tension of the pure alloy.