Incredible high-speed images of a water jet shooting through a droplet could lead to better needle-free drug injections

MIT and University of Twente scientists used a high-speed camera to capture the image above of a water jet barreling through a droplet. Beyond creating an astonishing photograph, the experiment is helping the researchers understand the impact dynamics of the event. Informed by what they saw, they were able to develop a simulation of how a fluid jet impacts various kinds of droplets. From MIT News:

As human skin is also a viscoelastic material, they say the model may be tuned to predict how fluids could be delivered through the skin without the use of needles.

"We want to explore how needle-free injection can be done in a way that minimizes damage to the skin," says David Fernandez Rivas, a research affiliate at MIT and professor at the University of Twente. "With these experiments, we are getting all this knowledge, to inform how we can create jets with the right velocity and shape to inject into skin."

Of course the images are not unlike the incredible photographs of bullets shooting through apples, captured in the 1960s and 1970s by MIT's Harold "Doc" Edgerton:

images: courtesy of the researchers, and Tiny Giants