Figure 3.

(Upper) Gas and liquid phase ordering in SF₆ under reduced gravity, after a thermal quench of 0.7 mK below the critical point (45.564°C). The container diameter is 12 mm. Gas and liquid eventually order with the liquid phase wetting the container wall and surrounding the gas phase, corresponding to σ_wl<σ_wg, where σ_wl and σ_wg are the wall-liquid and the wall-gas interfacial tensions, respectively. a, b, and c correspond to 120 s, 275 s and 3,960 s after quench, respectively. (Lower) Sorting out of chicken embryonic pigmented epithelial cells (dark) from chicken embryonic neural retinal cells (light). The average aggregate size is 200 μm. At the end of sorting, neural retinal cells preferentially wet the external tissue culture medium surrounding the aggregates. σ_tn(= 1.6 dyne/cm)<σ_tp(= 12.6 dyne/cm)³, where σ_tn and σ_tp are the tissue culture medium-neural retina and the tissue culture medium-pigmented epithelium interfacial tensions, respectively. a, b, and c correspond to 17 h, 42 h, and 73 h after initiation of sorting, respectively.